Heuristic (Noun)
Meaning
A commonsense rule (or set of rules) intended to increase the probability of solving some problem.
Classification
Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents.
Examples
- When solving complex math problems, students often rely on heuristics to find the most likely solution and then refine it.
- The search algorithm used a heuristic to guess the most probable file location and started searching from there.
- A good teacher provides heuristics to help students tackle problems they have not encountered before.
- Researchers have identified numerous heuristics that people use to make decisions under uncertainty.
- The trial-and-error approach is a simple heuristic that often works but can be inefficient in many situations.