The Nature of Analysis
An analysis is not a nicely arranged scrapbook of raw data. It should have a summary of the key characteristics of the topic, followed by the key variables and choices. Increasingly deep analysis can explain the internal dynamics of the matter being studied, and eventually to prediction, known as estimation.
The purpose of intelligence analysis is to reveal to a specific decision maker the underlying significance of selected target information. Analysts should begin with confirmed facts, apply expert knowledge to produce plausible but less certain findings, and even forecast, when the forecast is appropriately qualified. Analysts should not, however, engage in fortunetelling that has no basis in fact.
The mnemonic “Four Fs Minus One” may serve as a reminder of how to apply this criterion. Whenever the intelligence information allows, and the customer’s validated needs demand it, the intelligence analyst will extend the thought process as far along the Food Chain as possible, to the third “F” but not beyond to the fourth.
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Famous quotes containing the words nature and/or analysis:
“The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among Englishmen and Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are reminiscent,—others merely sensible, as the phrase is,—others prophetic.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Ask anyone committed to Marxist analysis how many angels on the head of a pin, and you will be asked in return to never mind the angels, tell me who controls the production of pins.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)