ABSTRACT
Seymour Papert, celebrated MIT professor, shared that his analytical thinking as a youth was greatly strengthened by the concept of gears, cogs, and wheels. Analytic thinkers are investigators, organizers, categorizers, labelers, and specifiers, but they only do the things within what they have experienced. For the most part, analysis is restricted to what can be seen or touched, manipulated or observed. Analytical thinkers use analytic strategies and analytic techniques to understand how things work, how they fit together, and how they relate to other things. Analytical thinkers use strategies such as logic to determine how things operate. To support their chosen or preferred strategy, analytical thinkers use analytical thinking techniques such as abstraction, Boolean logic, and identifying similarities and differences. Analytic thinkers are philosophers, college professors, transmission mechanics, and computer programmers. They reverse engineer, tinker, and solve puzzles by using strategies to guide their thinking and employing techniques as if they were tools.
