Sounds like we're talking about different levels of conceptual abstraction.

Here's an example: I need to generate a report where I need to cross-reference data from A and B. I need to know where A is going, where B is going, how to modify the schema of the events going into B to add a specific piece of data, where we can process inputs from A, how to do the join, and how to add the report into the dashboard.

On the one hand, I could ask the surface level question "how do I generate the report for ____?" but really there's a whole lot to unwrap, and what I need is the information to do the unwrapping. I don't need a course on statistics, I just need to understand our specific architecture.