page_title: Intelligence analysis
section_title: The nature of analysis
hierarchical_section_title: Intelligence analysis / The nature of analysis
caption_attribution_description: Symbolic food chain for intelligence estimates
context_page_description: Intelligence analysis is the application of individual and collective cognitive methods to weigh data and test hypotheses within a secret socio-cultural context. The descriptions are drawn from what may only be available in the form of deliberately deceptive information; the analyst must correlate the similarities among deceptions and extract a common truth. Although its practice is found in its purest form inside national intelligence agencies, its methods are also applicable in fields such as business intelligence or competitive intelligence.
context_section_description: An analysis 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.
caption: Food chain in intelligence analysis: the bigger the "fish", the more unlikely it is
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