There’s a reason why data scientists say they’re ‘interrogating’ data. According to Bill Schmarzo, CTO of IoT and analytics for Hitatchi Vantara, one of the most important skills that a data scientist brings to the table is critical thinking—in other words never taking things at face value and always digging deeper to question opinions, easy answers, expected answers, and biases.
Critical thinking is the judicious and objective analysis, exploration, and evaluation of an issue or a subject in order to form a viable and justifiable judgment.
–Bill Schmarzo, CTO of IoT and Analytics for Hitatchi Vantara
Scmarzo says that when he teaches data science students at the University of San Francisco School of Management, he expects them to practice critical thinking in nine key ways:

To read more, check out Schmarzo’s full opinion piece on critical thinking in data science.