Real-World Examples of Critical Thinking

1. Katherine Johnson

before you start

We’ve discussed the importance of critical thinking in everyday life, but what about the big picture? Can critical thinking help you advance in your career? In this section, we’ll look at a couple of success stories by people who’ve demonstrated critical thinking at a high level. We’ll also look at a worst-case scenario when critical thinking is abandoned. In each of these cases, we will look at the core elements of good critical thinking:

• Gathering and analyzing the best information available, which often comes from asking the right questions.
• Setting aside personal feelings and biases that may cloud your judgment.
• Challenging assumptions and being open-minded to new ways of thinking.

One icon of critical thinking is the mathematician Katherine Johnson. At a time when “computers” meant people doing longhand calculations, Johnson was hired by NASA to do this work and became essential to the U.S. Space Program. One of Johnson’s special skills was working backwards from a desired landing site to make navigation plans for astronauts returning to earth.

Besides her talent for performing mathematical calculations, Johnson had a knack for making sure there were always back-up plans and safety checks. For example, Johnson performed calculations to help astronauts navigate their way home by the stars even if all of their electronic equipment failed. As digital computer-aided calculations became the norm, Johnson double-checked the calculations to make sure they were correct. In one of her most famous moments, astronaut John Glenn refused to fly a mission until she verified the computer's projections. However, she was open-minded about the possibilities of non-human computers. Her trust for them helped build confidence for digital technology at NASA.

Johnson’s career is one of applied critical thinking at the highest level.

• Gathering, analyzing, and verifying information was at the heart of Johnson’s work.
• She set aside personal feelings that may have clouded her judgment, such as seeing the possibilities for non-human computers even though they challenged her own position and future at NASA.
• She challenged assumptions by asking questions such as, “What will happen if this expertly engineered system fails?”

did you know

Johnson’s story (along with colleagues Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson) is captured in the book Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly and in the movie based on the book.

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2. Billy Beane

Another example of critical thinking in action is Billy Beane and the 2002 Oakland Athletics baseball team (usually called the A’s). As general manager of the A’s, Beane faced an enormous budget shortfall in comparison to big-market teams like the New York Yankees. To make the A’s competitive, Beane had to take a whole new approach to the game, including both how to win games and how to win over fans. In so doing, he built a competitive and popular team, and radically changed the way every team does business.

did you know

The story of Billy Beane and the 2002 Oakland A’s is captured in the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis, and in the movie by the same name.

For decades, the prized measures (or “stats”) that told a player’s worth were “the triple crown”: hits, homers, and runs batted in. Players who reached high marks in all three were superstars. Superstars, in turn, filled the bleachers with fans. Since the days of Babe Ruth, that was the quintessential rule of how baseball worked. That meant the basic job of a general manager was to sign superstar players.

But Beane took a different approach. He was inspired by a growing movement in baseball to look at completely different measures of player ability like slugging percentage and “VARP” (value over replacement player). Notably, these stats had only recently become possible as the Internet made the data easy to find and easy to use and personal computers made it easy to run high-powered calculations. According to these stats, some superstar players—like Derek Jeter of the Yankees—were overrated, and others, like Omar Vizquel of Cleveland, were underrated. To baseball fans, the idea that Omar Vizquel was actually more valuable than Derek Jeter seemed ridiculous. Vizquel was well-liked and respected, but he was no Derek Jeter!

Beane built the 2002 team around these principles, signing underrated (and therefore, less expensive!) talent. He filled the roster with non-marquee players that had high values based on the new stats. The A’s turned into a juggernaut, winning over 100 games and going deep in the playoffs, all at a third of the salary of the New York Yankees. Fans love winning more than anything, so the team not only filled the bleachers in Oakland, they were a big draw on the road. Over the next 20 years, all teams started to replicate the “moneyball method.”

Beane demonstrated critical thinking in several ways:

• Gathering and analyzing the best and most accurate information available, in this case, new statistics measuring player performance.
• Trusting evidence-based analysis over gut feelings and instincts.
• Challenging basic, long-held assumptions about the “right” way to build a baseball team.

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3. The Mount Everest Disaster

A less successful example also comes from the world of sports.

In 1996, Rob Hall, an elite mountaineer, led a group to scale the summit of Mount Everest. Climbing the highest peak in the world requires not only climbing expertise, but significant resources. Hundreds of climbers have lost their lives trying, and most were highly skilled and experienced climbers.

Climbing to the summit (29,000 feet) is an extremely difficult and dangerous undertaking. Climbers spend weeks climbing to higher and higher altitudes while giving the body time to adjust to the rapidly lowered levels of oxygen. Camps are established along the way where the climbers stay for periods of time while they acclimate to the reduction in oxygen. The final push to the summit involves an 18-hour round trip from the last base camp to the summit.

did you know

The 1996 disaster on Mount Everest was told in the book and subsequent movie Into Thin Air. The book was written by Jon Krakauer, one of the climbers in the expedition who survived.

One rule Rob Hall’s team established was that if they did not reach the summit by 2 P.M., they would return to base camp to avoid descending in the dark. Nevertheless, they broke this rule, as many of the expedition reached the summit after 4 P.M. To make matters worse, a raging blizzard hit as the climbers descended. They had not anticipated a storm, and no contingency plan was in place. In total, eight climbers, including Rob Hall, lost their lives on the mountain. (Leger, 2016)

Hall’s team failed to use good critical thinking skills in several different ways:

• Hall made assumptions based on limited information. On previous climbs at that time of year, he had never seen such bad weather, so he didn’t think it would be a problem or have a plan in place.
• The team let emotions guide them. Besides the driving ambition to reach the peak, the team had a lot invested in the climb, in both time and money. Though they knew intellectually that they should reach the peak by 2 P.M., they pressed on when they missed the deadline.
• This also demonstrated closed-mindedness; the grit and determination that makes one a world-class mountain climber can also be a deadly failing.

think about it

What individuals (famous or not) do you think exemplify critical thinking? Do you know of anyone personally or through media who has demonstrated the following skills?

• Gathering the best and most accurate information available, which often comes from asking the right questions.
• Setting aside personal feelings and biases that may cloud their judgment.
• Challenging assumptions and being open-minded to new ways of thinking.

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4. Careers That Require Critical Thinking

As you read in the previous examples, critical thinking is essential in many professional fields, even sports. Some jobs have critical thinking at their core. For example:

• Police detectives have to ask the right questions, consider all the evidence, and analyze all possible answers to those questions to come up with the most likely conclusion based on that evidence.
• Medical staff must use critical thinking to ensure they make the right diagnosis, provide needed care at the first signs of a crisis, and give patients the correct treatments.
• Security analysts protect an organization’s networks and systems against intruders. In order to create the best protection plan, they must ask the right questions about how bad actors might get in, then analyze the data to find the best ways to protect the organization.
• Journalists must scrutinize their sources and ask the right questions to get true and accurate information.
• A manager at any level is a job that entails problem-solving and decisions, and at their best, managers foresee problems and opportunities by asking new questions.
• Educational administrators look to continuous improvement by collecting and analyzing information and asking key questions.
• Scientists and engineers are tasked with solving complex problems by first ascertaining the real nature of the problem and then deciding on the right and best solution.

In fact, critical thinking is a fundamental part of almost any job, and is an immensely valuable skill to employers. Employees with critical thinking skills often become high performers because they:

• Are curious and always interested in learning more,
• See connections between pieces of information that mere observation might not have flagged,
• Are open-minded and eager to hear different perspectives,
• Are self-reflective, examining their own biases and assumptions,
• Are able to come to creative solutions, and
• Are confident and able to support their decisions and conclusions.

One of the reasons employers like to hire college graduates—even ones with majors unrelated to the job—is that throughout the curriculum, college trains students in critical thinking. All of these skill sets build fundamentally upon critical thinking and are of benefit to any employer, and to you personally, inside and outside of work.

REFERENCES

Leger, C. (2016, December 31). The 1996 Everest Disaster - The Whole Story. Base Camp Magazine. basecampmagazine.com/2016/12/31/the-1996-everest-disaster-the-whole-story/

Roberto, M. (2009). The Art of Critical Decision Making. Chantilly: The Great Courses. www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/art-of-critical-decision-making.html

Shetterly, M. L. (n.d.). Katherine Johnson Biography. NASA. www.nasa.gov/content/katherine-johnson-biography

Steinberg, L. (2015, August 18). Changing the Game: The Rise of Sports Analytics. Forbes www.forbes.com/sites/leighsteinberg/2015/08/18/changing-the-game-the-rise-of-sports-analytics