A Miniature Guide to the Foundations of Analytic Thinking

The Thinker’s Guide to Analytic Thinking explores the practice of analyzing problems and opportunities and provides a framework for finding common denominators, inconsistencies, biases, and underlying causes. It helps readers learn to think within the logic of subjects and professions. By offering proper tools for analysis and assessment of thought, it empowers readers to address any decision with confidence.

As part of the Thinker’s Guide Library, this book advances the mission of the Foundation for Critical Thinking to promote fairminded critical societies through cultivating essential intellectual abilities and virtues across every field of study across world.

Dr. Linda Elder is an educational psychologist and internationally recognized authority on critical thinking who has taught both psychology and critical thinking at the college level. She has been president of the Foundation for Critical Thinking and the executive director of the Center for Critical Thinking for 25 years. She has a special interest in the relation of thought and emotion, as well as the cognitive and affective and has developed an original theory of the stages of critical thinking development. Elder has coauthored four books on critical thinking, as well as all 23 titles found in the Thinker's Guide Library.

Dr. Richard Paul was a leading proponent of critical thinking and, through his work and legacy, remains a distinguished thinker in the field. He founded the Center for Critical Thinking at Sonoma State University in 1980, followed by the Foundation for Critical Thinking. He developed concepts, principles, and theory essential to a robust and fairminded conception of critical thinking. Paul authored or coauthored more than two hundred articles and seven books on the critical thinking. He presented workshops to hundreds of thousands of educators over his 35-year career as a leader in the critical thinking movement.