There are two breakthroughs, actually, that have been made here in the age old philosophic subject of logic.
The first is FINDING A DATUM OF COMPARABLE MAGNITUDE TO THE SUBJECT.
A single datum or subject has to have a datum or subject with which to compare it before it can be fully understood.
By studying and isolating the principles that make a situation illogical one can then see what is necessary to be logical. This gives us a subject that could be called “Illogicality Testing” or “Irrationality Location” but which would be better described as DATA ANALYSIS. For it subjects data and therefore SITUATIONS to tests which establish any falsity or truth.
The other breakthrough consists of the discovery that no rules of logic can be valid unless one also includes the data being used. The nearest the ancients came to this was testing the premise or basis of an argument.
Trying to study Logic without also having the answers to Data is like describing everything about an engine without mentioning what fuel it runs on; or making a sentence like “He argued about” or “She disliked” without completing it.
Logic concerns obtaining answers. And answers depend on Data. Unless you can test and establish the truth and value of the data being used, one cannot attain right answers no matter what Aristotle may have said or what IBM may have built.
The road to Logic begins with ways and means of determining the value of the data to be employed in it.
Without that step no one can arrive at Logic.
Two things that are equal to each other and to which a third is equal are all equal to one another. If A equals B and B equals C, then C equals A. Great. This is often disputed as a theorem of logic and has been ever since Aristotle said so. There is even a modern cult of Non-Aristotelian Logic.
The facts are that the ancient theorem is totally dependent on the DATA used in it. Only if the DATA is correct does the theorem work.
Lacking emphasis on the data being used, this theorem can be proven true or false at will. The philosophers point out the fallacy without ever giving emphasis to data evaluation.
Unless you can prove or disprove the data you use in any logic system, the system itself will be faulty.
This is true of the IBM computer. It is true of CIA intelligence conclusions. It is true of Plato, Kant, Hume and your own personal computer as well.
DATA ANALYSIS is necessary to ANY logic system and always will be.
Ships run on oil, electric motors on electricity and logic runs on data.
If the data being stuffed into a computer is incorrect, no matter how well a computer is planned or built or proofed up against faults you can get a Bay of Pigs.
In mathematics no formula will give an answer better than the data being used in it.
VALID ANSWERS MAY ONLY BE ATTAINED IN USING VALID DATA.
Thus, if the subject of Data Analysis is neglected or imperfect or unknown or unsuspected as a step, then wild answers to situations and howling catastrophes can occur.
If Data Analysis becomes itself a codified subject, regardless of what formula is going to be used, then right answers can only then be attained.
The Mind is a remarkable computer.
It is demonstrable that a mind which has the wrong answers removed from it becomes brighter, IQ soars.
Therefore for our purposes we will consider the mind capable of being logical.
As processing improves the mind’s ability to reach right answers, then we can assume for our purposes that if a person can straighten out his data he can be logical and will be logical and can attain right answers to situations.
The fallacy of the mind is that it can operate on wrong data.
Thus if we specialize in the subject of DATA ANALYSIS we can assume that a person can attain right answers.
As an administrator (and anyone else) has to reach conclusions in order to act and has to act correctly to ensure his own or his group’s continued survival, it is vital that he be able to observe and conclude with minimal error.
Thus we will not be stressing HOW to think but how to analyze that with which one thinks — which is DATA.
This gives us the importance and use of Data Analysis.