Analytic fluency: What it is, who has it, and how it is learned.

Oregon Convention Center 

Compared to novice analysts, experienced analysts often have heightened analytic fluency, or those skills and intuitions for producing trustworthy and well-performing analyses that go beyond the formal skills of measurement, data formatting, modelling, and communication found in statistics textbooks. Traditionally, trainees build analytic fluency through informal mentorship, which is provided under the assumption that there is no substitute for experience. Unfortunately, today's analysts face new pressures requiring a faster uptake of analytic fluency than experience-based mentorship can give, such as influxes of new data, replication crises driven by widespread misunderstanding of core statistical principles, and technological advances that expose today's analysts to novel ethical challenges. These pressures prompt three questions: what exactly defines analytic fluency, how can we formalize its assessment, and how can mentors help trainees build analytic fluency faster than experience alone can? Here, I present results from mixed-methodological empirical investigations into the content, application, and transmission of analytic fluency. Findings and implications are discussed.