In logical thinking/reasoning, one mainly looks at the cause and effect relationship.

Logic is like mathematics. Let us look at an example here.

Example of Logical thinking:

A family has two kids.

One day, the 10-year-old elder son in the family gave his father a 100-rupee note telling him that he found it in the bedroom where his father hung his clothes. Father was very pleased and gave the boy a 10-rupee note as a reward for his honestly returning the money to its rightful owner. The lad happily went out and ate ice cream.

Seeing this incident, the 7-year-old elder son younger son’s mouth watered and he thought: "If I give some money to father like this, he will love me too. Hence, the next day he took a 100-rupee note from his father's pocket and gave it to his father telling him that he had found the note lying on the floor in the bedroom. Again, his father was very pleased and gave him a 10-rupee note as the boy had expected.

Thus, after a few days, the younger son repeated the story and got another reward from his father. This reinforced the younger boy's belief that if he kept on giving money to his father, he would keep getting rewards.

Actually, the third time when the boy gave money to his father, he did not get a reward. Instead, father started doubting what had really happened. He thought about the situation and chided the boy and asked him to tell the truth and threatened punishment if he did not tell the truth. The small kid was now frightened and confessed the whole truth. Since that day, he stopped that habit.

Now how analysis works:

His father analyzed (broke down into simpler parts) that ‘as the kid wanted to get a reward to enjoy, he had imitated elder brother.’

He understood that his son could not think this behaviour was wrong.

Therefore, he decided to teach his son not to lie and make him aware that lying was wrong. He told his son that he loved him too and that he didn’t need to lie to get anything from his father. This convinced his son.

Here, the thought of the younger son shows that he was merely using logic. He noted the cause and effect relationship.

But he didn’t know CRITICAL THINKING to understand when this logic would fail. If he repeated the trick he may not get the same result because he lacked practical experience in life.

Analytical thinking breaks up the problem into parts and examines each part to understand it with the help of experience.

Here, the father used analysis that included the experience, so we call it reasoning. He thought/ analysed that it is not possible that he could have dropped money carelessly so many times in so few days. That was experience.

Therefore, he decided, using his experience, to frighten the boy into telling the truth. Here, he believed that if he scared the boy (which is the cause), he would tell the truth (the effect) using logic.

Logic is a particular way of thinking. It may or may not be appropriate at all times since real-life does not follow a mathematically accurate structure. It tries to predict based on cause and effect relationships only. Logic deals only with given set of information. It is like mathematics - pure calculation. It is BLIND about reality.

But the analysis grapples with reality, breaks things into simple connected parts (complex to simple) and tries to fully understand the situation. The analysis requires personal experience while trying to understand the why of things and solving problems.

What is the Difference between Logical and Analytical thinking? Difference with an example

A Critical Thinking style