For crime analysts, a quick reminder:
a map is not a conclusion,
a timeline is not a theory,
and a link chart is definitely not a confession.
My latest article, “Critical Thinking Skills in Crime Analysis: Pattern Analysis, Temporal Analysis, and Link Analysis,” explores the thinking skills behind solid analytical work — the kind that helps us separate coincidence from connection, correlation from causation, and “interesting” from “actionable.”
In other words: how to keep our brains engaged when the software starts looking a little too confident.
Proud to put this one out. I hope it’s useful to analysts, supervisors, and educators working to strengthen analytic tradecraft.