Use Of Electronic Spreadsheets To Facilitate Critical Thinking In Quantitative Courses: A 25-Year Update

Students must improve critical thinking skills throughout their college curriculum at the undergraduate, graduate and professional school levels. Critical thinking skills are essential to innovators and decision makers in business, health care, engineering, government and many other disciplines. The effective decision maker must ask these questions for complex decisions and processes: • Why are the results what they are? • What is the range of feasible results? • Do these results effectively solve the problem? • What are the risks and how do we mitigate them? • Can we improve upon the solution? • Can we eliminate adverse side effects? Critical thinking skills often involve scenario analysis or “what if” analysis of numerical results. It is too common to get overwhelmed by scenario analysis but electronic spreadsheets such as Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets or Open Office can provide valuable insight if implemented effectively. Mathematics is critical but the focus must be on the analytics based upon the mathematics. For important decisions, electronic spreadsheets can be valuable complements to critical thinking skills.