Critical Thinking and Decision Making

Since the very core of critical thinking is identifying and challenging assumptions then analysis, interpretation, evaluation and inference are the very skills they mastered. .
             Lets examine how these skills relate to critical thinking as it has been defined so far. Interpretation is defined as the ability to comprehend and express the meaning or significance of a wide variety of experiences, situations, informational data, events, judgments, beliefs, rules or other criteria. What about some examples of interpretation which include recognizing a problem and describing it without bias. How about distinguishing a main idea from subordinate ideas in a text; paraphrasing someone else's ideas in your own words or identifying an author's purpose or point of view? .
             Now lets move to analysis which can best be described as identifying the intended and actual inferential relationships among statements, questions, concepts, descriptions or other forms of representations intended to express reasons, information or options. The process of identifying and examining an argument is also part of the analysis skill. Some examples of analysis can be expressed by identifying the similarities and differences between two approaches to a solution similar to what we experience when we decide whether to take the freeway or toll road to work each day. Then there is picking out the main assumption in a newspaper editorial and examining the various reasons the editor offers in support of this assumption. Or what about identifying unstated assumptions then developing a format to represent the conclusion with reasons to support or criticize it. .
             Evaluation can be best described as assessing the credibility of statements or other representations which are descriptions of a person's perceptions, experiences and to assess the logical strength of the intended inferential relationships among them. One example is how we judge the credibility of a person such as what makes a credible witness regarding a given event? Another example is judging if an argument's conclusion follows either with certainty or with a high level of confidence from its premises.