Critical Thinking

     You'll start to realize the farther along you get in my e-portfolio that I am not a math person, it is a fact I have come to terms with, but I have found a new understanding and appreciation for Statistics. While I believe I have strong critical thinking skills that I use daily in my full time job mitigating risk and making business decisions, I was challenged in a new way in the Spring of 2021 in Statistics. I used to believe all math was a bunch of numbers I would never use again but boy was I wrong! I learned through many resources in a virtual environment just how impactful statistics truly is in our everyday lives. One of my goals for critical thinking was to accomplish a better understanding of Statistics and use it to influence my research in other classes. In my artifact, I was asked to read a problem with a set of minimal data and figure out the answers to multiple questions. I had to first figure out what the questions were asking, how to find the answer, and then explain the reasoning of my answer with the data I figured out. This was a new way of thinking for me when it came to Math, as previously in other math classes prior to spcc, I had to just come up with the final answer and done, no further explanation. By learning and developing the skills of critical thinking, it poured over into some of my other courses which is how I measured that I was successful in meeting my first goal. It had me question the process or my reasoning when jumping to an answer in my Biology course. It helped me think through the data I could and should present in an argumentative paper for English that showed non biased information. I ended up being able to discern quickly when reading documents and news articles about how credible they were by reversing some of their statistical data and questioning it to see if there was an ulterior motive or gain by skewing the data. To look at it from an even more basic viewpoint, I was able to learn through statistics about the different methods in obtaining data in polls, which allowed me to look at data from sources objectively and see if the data was skewed by how they received it, such as a voluntary sample or if it was truly a random sample.  

 

     My second goal to be achieved was to improve my knowledge of developing a hypothesis and digging deeper into issues for my research papers. I truthfully believed hypotheses were meant for only science and math but by seeing how I could pose a question, give a hypothesis or educated guess, and then go through the process of finding if there is any truth to what I originally stated, can be used in so many other facets. I even pose hypotheses in work situations without even realizing it, because I know there are ways (that don’t just involve science labs) to find out how true or not true these statements can be and how to achieve the result. I believe I met my goal but still have room for improvement. While I have seen the success of my papers and other assignments grow because I have strengthened my critical thinking with posing more hypothesis, going to the beginning of the problem, and working through it by adding or subtracting variables, I believe I can do more research around implementing it even more in my other courses going forward. My takeaway is to use my best practices and purposefully implement them into more of my course assignments, not just research papers, to allow myself the opportunity to look at questions from different angles. 

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     If you asked me if I would ever use Math in my future job, I would say no, but after taking this course, I use it way more because I understand it! When I am writing my staffing updates to region executives, instead of shying away or struggling to find the one report which outlines the breakdown, I feel confident enough to figure out the statistics and ratios of my hires, pipeline and success rates of sourcing strategies. Critical thinking and statistics go hand in hand, and continue to be a tool I use daily now that I know how to pose a hypothesis, find out how to break it down, figure out the answer and provide my rationale.