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For other uses, see Heuristic (disambiguation).

A heuristic is a method to help solve a problem, commonly informal. It is particularly used for a method that often rapidly leads to a solution that is usually reasonably close to the best possible answer. Heuristics are "rules of thumb", educated guesses, intuitive judgments or simply common sense. A rule of thumb is a principle with broad application that is not intended to be strictly accurate or reliable for every situation

In more precise terms, heuristics stand for strategies using readily accessible, though loosely applicable, information to control problem-solving in human beings and machines. [1]

Contents

Example

Perhaps the most fundamental heuristic is "trial & error," which can be used in everything from matching bolts to bicycles to finding the values of variables in algebra problems.

Here are a few other commonly used heuristics, from Polya's classic How to Solve It:[2]

Psychology

In psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules, hard-coded by evolutionary processes or learned, which have been proposed to explain how people make decisions, come to judgments, and solve problems, typically when facing complex problems or incomplete information. Psychology (from Greek grc ψῡχή psȳkhē, "breath life soul" and grc -λογία -logia) is an Academic and Hard coding (also hard-coding or hardcoding) refers to the software development practice of embedding input or configuration data directly into the Source These rules work well under most circumstances, but in certain cases lead to systematic cognitive biases. For an article about the conceptual problems of the mind see Cognitive closure (philosophy.

For instance, people may tend to perceive more expensive beers as tasting better than inexpensive ones (providing the two beers are of similar initial quality or lack of quality and of similar style). Beer is the world's oldest and most widely consumed Alcoholic beverage and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea This finding holds true even when prices and brands are switched; putting the high price on the normally relatively inexpensive brand is enough to lead subjects to perceive it as tasting better than the beer that is normally more expensive. One might call this "price implies quality" bias. (Cf. Veblen good. In Economics, Veblen goods are a theoretical group of commodities for which peoples' preference for buying them increases as a direct function of their )

Much of the work of discovering heuristics in human decision-makers was ignited by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman[3]. Amos Nathan Tversky, PhD (עמוס טברסקי March 16, 1937 - June 2, 1996) was a cognitive and mathematical psychologist Daniel Kahneman (דניאל כהנמן (born 5 March 1934 is an Israeli American psychologist and Nobel laureate, notable for his work on Gerd Gigerenzer focuses on how heuristics can be used to make judgments that are in principle accurate, rather than producing cognitive biases – heuristics that are "fast and frugal". Gerd Gigerenzer (born September 3 1947) is a German Psychologist who has studied the use of Bounded rationality and Heuristics [4]

Theorized psychological heuristics

Well known

Less well known

Philosophy

In philosophy, especially in Continental European philosophy, the adjective "heuristic" (or the designation "heuristic device") is used when an entity X exists to enable understanding of, or knowledge concerning, some other entity Y. Anchoring or focalism is a Cognitive bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily or "anchor" on one trait or piece of information The availability heuristic is a phenomenon (which can result in a Cognitive bias) in which people base their prediction of the frequency of an event or the proportion within The representativeness heuristic is a Heuristic wherein commonality between objects of similar appearance is assumed The affect heuristic is a Heuristic in which current affect influences decisions The contagion heuristic is a psychological Heuristic leading people to avoid contact with people or objects viewed as "contaminated" by previous contact with someone In Psychology, a mental Heuristic in which the value of an object is assigned based on the amount of perceived effort that went into producing the object In Psychology, a mental Heuristic, or rule of thumb in which current behavior is judged to be correct based on how similar it is to past behavior and its outcomes A fluency heuristic in psychology is a mental Heuristic where if one out of two objects is processed more fluently faster or more smoothly the mind infers that The gaze heuristic is a Heuristic employed by people when trying to catch a ball According to the peak-end rule, we judge our past experiences almost entirely on how they were at their peak (pleasant or unpleasant and how they ended The recognition heuristic has been used as a model in the psychology of judgment and decision making and as a Heuristic in Artificial intelligence. In human Psychology, a mental heuristic in which the mind values something based on how easily it may lose it especially to competitors The similarity heuristic is a lesser-known psychological Heuristic pertaining to how people make judgments based on Similarity. The simulation heuristic is a psychological Heuristic, or simplified mental strategy first theorized by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky Social proof, also known as informational social influence, is a psychological phenomenon that occurs in ambiguous social situations when people are unable to determine According to the take-the-best heuristic, when making a judgment based on multiple criteria the critieria are tried one at a time according to their Cue validity, and a decision Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence knowledge truth beauty justice validity mind and language In Grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a Noun or Pronoun, giving more information about the A good example is a model, which, as it is never identical with what it models, is a heuristic device to enable understanding of what it models. The Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL was a rebel group in Liberia that became active in March 2003, launching attacks from Côte d'Ivoire. The map is not the territory is a remark by Alfred Korzybski, encapsulating his view that an abstraction derived from something or a reaction to it is not the thing itself Stories, metaphors, etc. , can also be termed heuristic in that sense. A classic example is the notion of utopia as described in Plato's best-known work, The Republic. Utopia is a name for an ideal community taken from the title of a book written in 1516 by Sir Thomas More describing a fictional Island in the Biography Early life Birth and family Plato was born in Athens Greece The Republic ( Greek: / Politeía, meaning "political system" Latin: Res Publica, meaning "public business" or This means that the "ideal city" as depicted in the The Republic is not given as something to be pursued, or to present an orientation-point for development; rather, it shows how things would have to be connected, and how one thing would lead to another (often with highly problematic results), if one would opt for certain principles and carry them through rigorously.

"Heuristic" is also often commonly used as a noun, to describe a rule-of-thumb, procedure, method, and so on in, for example, the context of the construction of scientific theories. (See the logic of discovery, and philosophers such as Lakatos, Lindley Darden, and others. Imre Lakatos ( November 9, 1922 – February 2, 1974) was a Philosopher of mathematics and science, Lindley Darden (born 1945 is a contemporary philosopher of science, with a research focus on the Philosophy of biology. )

Law

In legal theory, especially in the theory of law and economics, heuristics are used in the law when case-by-case analysis would be impractical, insofar as "practicality" is defined by the interests of a governing body. Law is a system of rules enforced through a set of Institutions used as an instrument to underpin civil obedience politics economics and society Law and Economics, or economic analysis of law is an approach to Legal theory that applies methods of Economics to law Law is a system of rules enforced through a set of Institutions used as an instrument to underpin civil obedience politics economics and society Case analysis is one of the most general and applicable methods of analytical thinking depending only on the division of a problem decision or situation into a sufficient number of separate [5]

For instance, in many states in the United States the legal drinking age is 21, because it is argued that people need to be mature enough to make decisions involving the risks of alcohol consumption. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the The legal drinking age is a limit assigned by governments to restrict the access of Children and Youth to Alcoholic beverages Legal drinking ages vary from In Chemistry, an alcohol is any Organic compound in which a Hydroxyl group ( - O[[hydrogen H]]) is bound to a Carbon However, assuming people mature at different rates, the specific age of 21 would be too late for some and too early for others. In this case, the somewhat arbitrary deadline is used because it is impossible or impractical to tell whether one individual is mature enough that society can trust them with that kind of responsibility. Some proposed changes, however, have included the completion of an alcohol education course rather than the attainment of 21 years of age as the criterion for legal alcohol possession. This would situate youth alcohol policy more on a case-by-case model and less on a heuristic one, since the completion of such a course would presumably be voluntary and not uniform across the population.

The same reasoning applies to patent law. A patent is a set of Exclusive rights granted by a State to an inventor or his assignee for a fixed period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an Patents are justified on the grounds that inventors need to be protected in order to have incentive to invent. A patent is a set of Exclusive rights granted by a State to an inventor or his assignee for a fixed period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an It is therefore argued that, in society's best interest, inventors should be issued with a temporary government-granted monopoly on their product, so that they can recoup their investment costs and make economic profit for a limited period of time. In Economics, a monopoly (from Greek monos, alone or single + polein, to sell exists when a specific individual or enterprise has sufficient In the United States the length of this temporary monopoly is 20 years from the date the application for patent was filed, though the monopoly does not actually begin until the application has matured into a patent. However, like the drinking-age problem above, the specific length of time would need to be different for every product in order to be efficient; a 20-year term is used because it is difficult to tell what the number should be for any individual patent. More recently, some, including Lawrence Lessig, have argued that patents in different kinds of industries – such as software patents – should be protected for different lengths of time. Lawrence Lessig (born June 3 1961) is an American academic and political activist Software patent does not have a universally accepted definition

Computer science

Main article: Heuristic algorithm

In computer science, a heuristic is a technique designed to solve a problem that ignores whether the solution can be proven to be correct, but which usually produces a good solution or solves a simpler problem that contains or intersects with the solution of the more complex problem. In Computer science, a heuristic algorithm or simply a Heuristic is an Algorithm that ignores whether the solution to the problem can be proven Computer science (or computing science) is the study and the Science of the theoretical foundations of Information and Computation and their Many commercial anti-virus scanners use heuristic signatures to look for specific attributes and characteristics for detecting viruses and other forms of malware.

Heuristics are intended to gain computational performance or conceptual simplicity, potentially at the cost of accuracy or precision.

Human-computer interaction

In human-computer interaction, heuristic evaluation is a usability-testing technique devised by expert usability consultants. Human–computer interaction or HCI is the study of interaction between people ( users and Computers It is often regarded as the intersection of A heuristic evaluation is a discount Usability inspection method for computer software that helps to identify Usability problems in the user interface (UI design Usability testing is a technique used to evaluate a product by testing it on users In heuristic evaluation, the user interface is reviewed by experts and its compliance to usability heuristics (broadly stated characteristics of a good user interface) is assessed, and any violating aspects are recorded. The user interface (or Human Computer Interface) is the aggregate of means by which people&mdash the users '&mdash interact with the System

Engineering

Main article: Heuristic (engineering)

In engineering, a heuristic is an experience-based method that can be used as an aid to solve process design problems, varying from size of equipment to operating conditions. In Engineering, heuristics are experience based methods that are used to reduce the need for calculations pertaining to equipment size performance or operating conditions Engineering is the Discipline and Profession of applying technical and scientific Knowledge and By using heuristics, time can be reduced when solving problems, which may be very valuable.

Because heuristics are fallible, it is important to understand their limitations. They are intended to be used as aids in order to make quick estimates and preliminary process designs.

Notes

  1. ^ Pearl, Judea (1983). Heuristics: Intelligent Search Strategies for Computer Problem Solving. New York, Addison-Wesley, p. vii.
  2. ^ Polya, George (1945) How To Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02356-5   ISBN 0-691-08097-6
  3. ^ Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky and Paul Slovic, eds. (1982) Judgement under Uncertainty: Heuristics & Biases. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press ISBN 0-521-28414-7
  4. ^ Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter M. Todd, and the ABC Research Group (1999). Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart. Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514381-7
  5. ^ Gerd Gigerenzer and Christoph Engel, eds. (2007). Heuristics and the Law, Cambridge, The MIT Press, ISBN 978-0-262-07275-5

See also

Further reading

External links

Dictionary

heuristic

-adjective

  1. relating to general strategies or methods for solving problems
  2. especially, of a method that is not certain to arrive at an optimal solution

-noun

  1. a heuristic method
  2. the art of applying heuristic methods
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