Conceptualizing systemically and in terms of conditional probabilities, rather than categorically, are perhaps the two keys to statistical thinking.

"What the heck does that mean?" you might wonder. A concrete example is medicine. Doctors are usually not biostatisticians but are trained to think statistically.

This is why they say things like: "If there are no serious complications and no side effects from the medication, and no deterioration in liver function, then the prognosis is good."

One way to define statistical thinking is a series of questions we can ask ourselves, such as:

Am I asking the right questions?

Are there rival explanations I haven't considered?

Am I confusing the possible with the plausible or the plausible with fact?

Are there unobserved variables or other confounders I haven’t accounted for?

Am I confusing cause with effect, or correlation with causation?

Am I drawing conclusions about fruit based only on apples?

Given A and B, if I do C and D, what are the likely outcomes?

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