ATP 2-33.4, page 17

Chapter 2 Analytic Skills This chapter discusses the analytical skills required to successfully analyze information. It describes basic thinking abilities, critical and creating thinking, and avoiding analytical pitfalls. OVERVIEW 2-1. The conclusions reached during intelligence analysis must be objective and supported by facts and reasonable assumptions. When communicating the results of intelligence analysis, the analyst must ensure the commander and the staff understand not just the conclusion reached but how the analyst arrived at the conclusion. This allows the commander and the staff to challenge the analysis based on objective measures. In doing this, the analyst leverages the experience and analytical skill of the organization’s most senior personnel. BASIC THINKING ABILITIES 2-2. Army intelligence personnel are required to utilize a number of basic abilities and complex skills to analyze information. All of these skills are related to the analyst’s ability to think. As an activity, intelligence analysis is primarily focused on thinking. Intelligence analysts must continually strive to improve the quality of their thinking. There are three basic thinking abilities required for intelligence analysis: information ordering, pattern recognition, and reasoning. INFORMATION ORDERING 2-3. Information ordering is the ability to follow previously defined rules or sets of rules to arrange data in a meaningful order. In the context of intelligence analysis, this ability allows people, often with the assistance of technology, to arrange information in ways that permit analysis, synthesis, and a higher level of understanding. The arrangement of information according to certain learned rules leads the analyst to make conclusions and disseminate them as intelligence. A danger arises, however, in that such ordering is inherently limiting—the analyst may not look for alternative explanations because the known rules lead to an easy conclusion. PATTERN RECOGNITION 2-4. Humans detect patterns and impose patterns on apparently random entities and events in order to understand them, often doing this without being aware of it. Intelligence analysts impose or detect patterns to identify relationships, and often to infer what they will do in the future. Pattern recognition lets analysts separate the important from the less important, even the trivial, and to conceptualize a degree of order out of apparent chaos. However, imposing or seeking patterns can introduce bias. Analysts may impose culturally defined patterns on random aggregates rather than recognize inherent patterns, thereby misinterpreting events or situations. REASONING 2-5. The ability to reason is what permits humans to process information and formulate explanations, to assign meaning to observed actions and events. There are four types of reasoning that guide analysts in transforming information into intelligence: inductive reasoning, analogical reasoning, deductive reasoning, and abductive reasoning. 18 August 2014 ATP 2-33.4 2-1 18 August 2014 ATP 2-33.4 2-1 Chapter 2 Analytic Skills This chapter discusses the analytical skills required to successfully analyze information. It describes basic thinking abilities, critical and creating thinking, and avoiding analytical pitfalls. OVERVIEW 2-1. The conclusions reached during intelligence analysis must be objective and supported by facts and reasonable assumptions. When communicating the results of intelligence analysis, the analyst must ensure the commander and the staff understand not just the conclusion reached but how the analyst arrived at the conclusion. This allows the commander and the staff to challenge the analysis based on objective measures. In doing this, the analyst leverages the experience and analytical skill of the organization’s most senior personnel. BASIC THINKING ABILITIES 2-2. Army intelligence personnel are required to utilize a number of basic abilities and complex skills to analyze information. All of these skills are related to the analyst’s ability to think. As an activity, intelligence analysis is primarily focused on thinking. Intelligence analysts must continually strive to improve the quality of their thinking. There are three basic thinking abilities required for intelligence analysis: information ordering, pattern recognition, and reasoning. INFORMATION ORDERING 2-3. Information ordering is the ability to follow previously defined rules or sets of rules to arrange data in a meaningful order. In the context of intelligence analysis, this ability allows people, often with the assistance of technology, to arrange information in ways that permit analysis, synthesis, and a higher level of understanding. The arrangement of information according to certain learned rules leads the analyst to make conclusions and disseminate them as intelligence. A danger arises, however, in that such ordering is inherently limiting—the analyst may not look for alternative explanations because the known rules lead to an easy conclusion. PATTERN RECOGNITION 2-4. Humans detect patterns and impose patterns on apparently random entities and events in order to understand them, often doing this without being aware of it. Intelligence analysts impose or detect patterns to identify relationships, and often to infer what they will do in the future. Pattern recognition lets analysts separate the important from the less important, even the trivial, and to conceptualize a degree of order out of apparent chaos. However, imposing or seeking patterns can introduce bias. Analysts may impose culturally defined patterns on random aggregates rather than recognize inherent patterns, thereby misinterpreting events or situations. REASONING 2-5. The ability to reason is what permits humans to process information and formulate explanations, to assign meaning to observed actions and events. There are four types of reasoning that guide analysts in transforming information into intelligence: inductive reasoning, analogical reasoning, deductive reasoning, and abductive reasoning.