Recommendations for building general analytical skills

This page describes recommendations for building general analytical skills. These go somewhat beyond verbal skills, which simply involves reading comprehension and skill at expression, and it also goes beyond mathematical skills. General analytical skills rely on both verbal and mathematical skills, but combine these with a deep understanding of how the world works. Somebody with strong general analytical skills can quickly look at a mobile app, a business proposal, a study plan, or an economic development policy and identify possible considerations that would go into evaluating its soundness.

General analytical skills are closely related to what is sometimes termed crystallized intelligence (as opposed to fluid intelligence). They are also related to what people term critical thinking skills.

There are two components to general analytical skills:

• A strong knowledge base, comprising not just factual knowledge but an intuition for how models in diverse areas work (including models of the physical, natural, and social world).
• Reasoning ability, both verbal and mathematical.