Intermediate · Cognitive

Heuristics

Visual diagram · (in preparation) · Math · (in preparation) · Worked example · 3 difficulty levels.

TL;DR. Practical rules of thumb that produce good-enough solutions when optimal ones are too expensive.

Technical Definition

Practical rules of thumb that produce good-enough solutions when optimal ones are too expensive.

How it works

From A* search heuristics to LLM prompting tricks ('think step by step'), heuristics power systems where exact methods don't scale. They are valuable but fallible — the art is knowing when a heuristic is reliable and when it isn't.

Related Concepts

• Reasoning — An AI system's ability to draw logical, multi-step conclusions from given information.
• Planning — Deciding on a sequence of actions to achieve a goal under given constraints.
• Decision Making — Choosing actions or recommendations under uncertainty, often using probabilistic or utility-based reasoning.