Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of or relating to a usually speculative formulation serving as a guide in the investigation or solution of a problem: "The historian discovers the past by the judicious use of such a heuristic device as the 'ideal type'” ( Karl J. Weintraub).
- adj. Of or constituting an educational method in which learning takes place through discoveries that result from investigations made by the student.
- adj. Computer Science Relating to or using a problem-solving technique in which the most appropriate solution of several found by alternative methods is selected at successive stages of a program for use in the next step of the program.
- n. A heuristic method or process.
- n. The study and application of heuristic methods and processes.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Serving to find or discover.
- n. Same as heuretic.
Wiktionary
- adj. Relating to general strategies or methods for solving problems.
- adj. Of a method that is not certain to arrive at an optimal solution.
- n. A heuristic method.
- n. The art of applying heuristic methods.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Serving to promote discovery or learning; -- used especially of thories or paradigms which stimulate new ideas for discovering facts in experimental sciences.
- adj. Serving to stimulate people to learn and discover on their own, especially by encouraging experimental and trial-and-error methods for solving problems.
- adj. Pertaining to or based on trial-and-error and experimental methods of learning and evaluation.
- adj. Based on the use of an efficient trial-and error method to search a space of possible solutions to a problem, or to find an acceptable approximate solution, when an exact algorithmic method is unavailable or too time-consuming.
- n. A heuristic method; a specific heuristic procedure.
- n. A theory or approach which serves to promote discovery or learning by encouraging experimentation.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. of or relating to or using a general formulation that serves to guide investigation
- n. a commonsense rule (or set of rules) intended to increase the probability of solving some problem
Etymologies
- From Greek heuriskein, to find.
Examples
“Perhaps one term in the heuristic is the number of non-english words/names?”
“This is called a heuristic: a mental shortcut arrived at almost without thought because experience has forged the connections so deeply.”
“Personally I’ve found that a very good heuristic is exactly what Josh describes.”
“Some virus scanners also employ an additional line of defence called heuristic analysis, which attempts to identify new forms of malware right away by scanning for smaller sections of code that might indicate some bad behaviour, even if the virus has never been detected before.”
How Do You Know If Your Download Really Has A Virus? | Lifehacker Australia
“Another way of assessing the merit of an argument in a communication is to use a so-called heuristic.”
“This frontier is an abstraction, an heuristic, that is usually not known to the negotiators.”
Simon & Schuster: The Manager as Negotiator Bargaining for Cooperation and Competitive Gain
“The so-called heuristic detection methods could take only milliseconds to do what was previously done in a week, researchers claim.”
“One annoying problem with Vista's auto-elevation filename heuristic is that it overrides any manifests specified in the application.”
“Practise what I have read, namely heuristic evaluation.”
“Of course, this is a heuristic, which is a fancy way of saying that it doesn't work.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘heuristic’.
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G[r]eek
A collection of words found in English that are either purely Greek or have Greek etymology.
Please add with caution and certainty. Will be regularly updated by me.etymology, philosophy, laconic, disharmony, patriarchic, archaic, phlogiston, aether, aeon, angel, arachnid, rhythm and 322 more...
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Vocab
goat rodeo, fardel, quotidian, deportment, opprobrium, deracinated, inculcate, desultory, orotund, chivvy, diktat, casuistry and 24 more...
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The Times
umbrageous, libidinaly, dicastery, millenarian, penultimate, eschatological, construe, heuristic, transmogrify, fulgurating, inimical
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pertaining to psychology
words used in psychology
jwjarvis strongly heuristic methodology Sep 29, 2010
maddening Heuristic evaluations are also performed on websites. It's moved from a literature-based concept to a web-based concept. Jakob Nielsen at useit.com describes the Heuristic process at is pertains to websites here:
http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/
Mar 30, 2009
maesepedro this is a killer concept but quite an annoying word to look at and pronunce IMHO. Sep 17, 2008
seanahan It's important to note that "experience" doesn't necessarily imply human experience. A computer can examine sample problems to come up with heuristics, it is a standard technique in artificial intelligence. Jan 21, 2008
shanglee The only real test is solving a problem by experience rather than theory. Jan 20, 2008