Heuristic reasoning is often based on induction, or on analogy... Induction is the process of discovering general laws ... Induction tries to find regularity and coherence... Its most conspicuous instruments are generalization, specialization, analogy.[...] Heuristic discusses human behavior in the face of problems [... that have been] preserved in the wisdom of proverbs.[13]
A heuristic is a strategy that ignores part of the information, with the goal of making decisions more quickly, frugally, and/or accurately than more complex methods (Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier [2011], p. 454; see also Todd et al. [2012], p. 7).[15]
— S. Chow, "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'", The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
Heuristics are strategies based on rules to generate optimal decisions, like the anchoring effect and utility maximization problem.[16] These strategies depend on using readily accessible, though loosely applicable, information to control problem solving in human beings, machines and abstract issues.[17][18] When an individual applies a heuristic in practice, it generally performs as expected. However it can alternatively create systematic errors.[19]
The most fundamental heuristic is trial and error, which can be used in everything from matching nuts and bolts to finding the values of variables in algebra problems. In mathematics, some common heuristics involve the use of visual representations, additional assumptions, forward/backward reasoning and simplification.
In psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules, either learned or inculcated by evolutionary processes. These psychological heuristics have been proposed to explain how people make decisions, come to judgements, and solve problems. These rules typically come into play when people face complex problems or incomplete information. Researchers employ various methods to test whether people use these rules. The rules have been shown to work well under most circumstances, but in certain cases can lead to systematic errors or cognitive biases.[21]
The study of heuristics in human decision-making was developed in the 1970s and the 1980s, by the psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman,[82] although the concept had been originally introduced by the Nobel laureateHerbert A. Simon. Simon's original primary object of research was problem solving that showed that we operate within what he calls bounded rationality. He coined the term satisficing, which denotes a situation in which people seek solutions, or accept choices or judgements, that are "good enough" for their purposes although they could be optimised.[83]
The adaptive toolbox contains strategies for fabricating heuristic devices.[86] The core mental capacities are recall (memory), frequency, object permanence, and imitation.[87]Gerd Gigerenzer and his research group argued that models of heuristics need to be formal to allow for predictions of behavior that can be tested.[88] They study the fast and frugal heuristics in the "adaptive toolbox" of individuals or institutions, and the ecological rationality of these heuristics; that is, the conditions under which a given heuristic is likely to be successful.[89] The descriptive study of the "adaptive toolbox" is done by observation and experiment, while the prescriptive study of ecological rationality requires mathematical analysis and computer simulation. Heuristics – such as the recognition heuristic, the take-the-best heuristic and fast-and-frugal trees – have been shown to be effective in predictions, particularly in situations of uncertainty. It is often said that heuristics trade accuracy for effort but this is only the case in situations of risk. Risk refers to situations where all possible actions, their outcomes and probabilities are known. In the absence of this information, that is under uncertainty, heuristics can achieve higher accuracy with lower effort.[90] This finding, known as a less-is-more effect, would not have been found without formal models. The valuable insight of this program is that heuristics are effective not despite their simplicity – but because of it. Furthermore, Gigerenzer and Wolfgang Gaissmaier found that both individuals and organisations rely on heuristics in an adaptive way.[91]
Cognitive-experiential self-theory
Heuristics, through greater refinement and research, have begun to be applied to other theories, or be explained by them. For example, the cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST) is also an adaptive view of heuristic processing. CEST breaks down two systems that process information. At some times, roughly speaking, individuals consider issues rationally, systematically, logically, deliberately, effortfully, and verbally. On other occasions, individuals consider issues intuitively, effortlessly, globally, and emotionally.[92] From this perspective, heuristics are part of a larger experiential processing system that is often adaptive, but vulnerable to error in situations that require logical analysis.[93]
Attribute substitution
In 2002, Daniel Kahneman and Shane Frederick proposed that cognitive heuristics work by a process called attribute substitution, which happens without conscious awareness.[94] According to this theory, when somebody makes a judgement (of a "target attribute") that is computationally complex, a more easily calculated "heuristic attribute" is substituted. In effect, a cognitively difficult problem is dealt with by answering a rather simpler problem, without being aware of this happening.[94] This theory explains cases where judgements fail to show regression toward the mean.[95] Heuristics can be considered to reduce the complexity of clinical judgments in health care.[96]
A heuristic is stored in the memory.[97] Heuristics are inherently phenomenological, e.g., I and Thou.[98]
Philosophy
A heuristic device is used when an entity X exists to enable understanding of, or knowledge concerning, some other entity Y.
A good example is a model that, as it is never identical with what it models, is a heuristic device to enable understanding of what it models. Stories, metaphors, etc., can also be termed heuristic in this sense. A classic example is the notion of utopia as described in Plato's best-known work, The Republic. This means that the "ideal city" as depicted in 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 opted for certain principles and carried them through rigorously.
The present securities regulation regime largely assumes that all investors act as perfectly rational persons. In truth, actual investors face cognitive limitations from biases, heuristics, and framing effects. For instance, in all states in the United States the legal drinking age for unsupervised persons is 21 years, because it is argued that people need to be mature enough to make decisions involving the risks of alcohol consumption. 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 delineation is used because it is impossible or impractical to tell whether an individual is sufficiently mature for society to 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 put youth alcohol policy more on a case-by-case basis 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. Patents are justified on the grounds that inventors must be protected so they have incentive to invent. It is therefore argued that it is in society's best interest that inventors receive a temporary government-granted monopoly on their idea, so that they can recoup investment costs and make economic profit for a limited period. In the United States, the length of this temporary monopoly is 20 years from the date the patent application 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 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 University of North Dakota law professor Eric E. Johnson, have argued that patents in different kinds of industries – such as software patents – should be protected for different lengths of time.[103]
Artificial intelligence
The bias–variance tradeoff gives insight into describing the less-is-more strategy.[104] A heuristic can be used in artificial intelligence systems while searching a solution space. The heuristic is derived by using some function that is put into the system by the designer, or by adjusting the weight of branches based on how likely each branch is to lead to a goal node.
Behavioural economics
Heuristics refers to the cognitive shortcuts that individuals use to simplify decision-making processes in economic situations. Behavioral economics is a field that integrates insights from psychology and economics to better understand how people make decisions.
Anchoring and adjustment is one of the most extensively researched heuristics in behavioural economics. Anchoring is the tendency of people to make future judgements or conclusions based too heavily on the original information supplied to them. This initial knowledge functions as an anchor, and it can influence future judgements even if the anchor is entirely unrelated to the decisions at hand. Adjustment, on the other hand, is the process through which individuals make gradual changes to their initial judgements or conclusions.
Anchoring and adjustment has been observed in a wide range of decision-making contexts, including financial decision-making, consumer behavior, and negotiation. Researchers have identified a number of strategies that can be used to mitigate the effects of anchoring and adjustment, including providing multiple anchors, encouraging individuals to generate alternative anchors, and providing cognitive prompts to encourage more deliberative decision-making.
Other heuristics studied in behavioral economics include the representativeness heuristic, which refers to the tendency of individuals to categorize objects or events based on how similar they are to typical examples,[105] and the availability heuristic, which refers to the tendency of individuals to judge the likelihood of an event based on how easily it comes to mind.[106]
Stereotyping
Stereotyping is a type of heuristic that people use to form opinions or make judgements about things they have never seen or experienced.[107] They work as a mental shortcut to assess everything from the social status of a person (based on their actions),[12] to classifying a plant as a tree based on it being tall, having a trunk, and that it has leaves (even though the person making the evaluation might never have seen that particular type of tree before).
Stereotypes, as first described by journalist Walter Lippmann in his book Public Opinion (1922), are the pictures we have in our heads that are built around experiences as well as what we are told about the world.[108][109]
See also
Look up heuristic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Heuristics in judgment and decision-making – Simple strategies or mental processes involved in making quick decisionsPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
Rule of inference – Systematic logical process capable of deriving a conclusion from hypotheses[111]
SCAMPER – SCAMPER is an acronym for the creative development process proposed by Alex Faickney Osborn.
Situated cognition – theory that posits that knowing is inseparable from doing by arguing that all knowledge is situated in activity bound to social, cultural and physical contextsPages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback
^Groner, Rudolf; Groner, Marina; Bischof, Walter (2014). Methods of heuristics. Routledge. 'guiding discovery' or 'improving problem solving'... its origin in ancient Greece where the verb 'heuriskein' means to find.
^Hughes, Barnabas (1974). "Heuristic Teaching in Mathematics". Educational Studies in Mathematics. 5 (3): 291–99. doi:10.1007/BF00684704. JSTOR3482053. Retrieved 5 May 2024. The word heuristic is taken directly from the Greek verb, heuriskein, 'to discover'. As a noun it is defined as 'a technique of discovery' and as an adjective, it means 'serving to guide, discover, or reveal'. The more common designation for all of this is 'the discovery method'.
^Hertwig, Ralph; Pachur, Thorsten (2015). "Heuristics, history of". International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences: 829–835. doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.03221-9. ISBN978-0-08-097087-5. Retrieved 10 May 2024. The origin of the term goes back to the Ancient Greek verb heuriskein, which means 'to find out' or 'to discover.' Heuristics are sometimes also referred to as 'mental shortcuts' or 'rules of thumb.'
^Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. doi:10.1093/bjps/axu028. JSTOR24562967. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Not only is 'heuristic' used in diverse ways across and within disciplines, but its meaning has evolved over the years.
^Gigerenzer, Gerd (2005). "I Think, Therefore I Err". Social Research. 72 (1): 195–218. doi:10.1353/sor.2005.0029. JSTOR40972008. Retrieved 5 May 2024. A good error is a consequence of the adaptation of mental heuristics to the structure of environments. This ecological view is illustrated by visual illusions. Not making good errors would destroy human intelligence.
^Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. doi:10.1093/bjps/axu028. JSTOR24562967. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Heuristics are commonly understood as economical shortcut procedures that may not lead to optimal or correct results, but will generally produce outcomes that are in some sense satisfactory or 'good enough'.
^Romanycia, M.; Pelletier, F. (1985). "What is a heuristic?". Computational Intelligence. 1 (1): 47–58. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8640.1985.tb00058.x. Retrieved 7 May 2024. Hence to paraphrase Polya, heuristic is a science of problem-solving behavior that focuses on plausible, provisional, useful, but fallible, mental operations for discovering solutions.
^Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0024-F16D-5. PMID21126183. Retrieved 6 May 2024. Shah & Oppenheimer (2008) proposed that all heuristics rely on effort reduction by one or more of the following: (a) examining fewer cues, (b) reducing the effort of retrieving cue values, (c) simplifying the weighting of cues, (d) integrating less information, and (e) examining fewer alternatives.
^Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. doi:10.1093/bjps/axu028. JSTOR24562967. Retrieved 5 May 2024. In a recent review article written with Wolfgang Gaissmaier, the following definition is proposed:
^Pearl, Judea (1983). Heuristics: Intelligent Search Strategies for Computer Problem Solving. New York, NY: Addison-Wesley. p. vii. ISBN978-0-201-05594-8.
^Hjeij, Mohamad; Vilks, Arnis (2023). "A brief history of heuristics: how did research on heuristics evolve?". Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. 10 (1): 1–15. doi:10.1057/s41599-023-01542-z. Gigerenzer (2021) [says] humans [and] other organisms evolved to acquire what he calls 'embodied heuristics' that can be both innate or learnt rules of thumb, which in turn supply the agility to respond to the lack of information by fast judgement. The 'embodied heuristics' use the mental capacity that includes the motor and sensory abilities that start to develop from the moment of birth. [...] 'dual-process theories' [...] we find it helpful to point out that one may distinguish between 'System 1 heuristics' [neuro] and 'System 2 heuristics' [neuro] (Kahneman 2011, p. 98).
^Nickles, Thomas (1987). "Lakatosian Heuristics and Epistemic Support". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 38 (2): 181–205. doi:10.1093/bjps/38.2.181. JSTOR687047. Retrieved 5 May 2024. As Popperians and Lakatosians use the term, a 'justificationist' theory of knowledge is one committed to the existence of foundations of knowledge, at least probabilistic foundations.
^Todd, P; Dieckmann, A (2004). "Heuristics for Ordering Cue Search in Decision Making". Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems: 13–18. Retrieved 6 May 2024. TTB consists of three building blocks. (1) Search rule: Search through cues in the order of their validity, a measure of accuracy equal to the proportion of correct decisions made by a cue out of all the times that cue discriminates between pairs of options. (2) Stopping rule: Stop search as soon as one cue is found that discriminates between the two options. (3) Decision rule: Select the option to which the discriminating cue points, that is, the option that has the cue value associated with higher criterion values.
^Gigerenzer, Gerd (2008). "Why Heuristics Work". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 3 (1): 20–29. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2008.00058.x. JSTOR40212224. PMID26158666. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Take the best (Gigerenzer & Goldstein, 1996). Infer which of two alternatives has the higher value by (a) searching through cues in order of validity, (b) stopping the search as soon as a cue discriminates, (c) choosing the alternative this cue favors.
^Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0024-F16D-5. PMID21126183. Retrieved 6 May 2024. Wubben & Wangenheim (2008) reported that experienced managers use a simple recency-of-last-purchase rule: 'Hiatus heuristic: If a customer has not purchased within a certain number of months (the hiatus), the customer is classified as inactive; otherwise, the customer is classified as active.'
^Gigerenzer, Gerd; Brighton, Henry (2009). "Homo Heuristicus: Why Biased Minds Make Better Inferences". Topics in Cognitive Science. 1 (1): 107–143. doi:10.1111/j.1756-8765.2008.01006.x. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0024-F678-0. PMID25164802. Retrieved 6 May 2024. The priority heuristic, a one-good-reason heuristic with no free parameters (Brandstätter, Gigerenzer, & Hertwig, 2008; Brandstätter et al., 2006) that has similar building blocks to take-the-best, has been shown to imply (not just have parameter sets that are consistent with) several of the major violations simultaneously, including the Allais paradox and the fourfold pattern (Katsikopoulos & Gigerenzer, 2008).
^Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0024-F16D-5. PMID21126183. Retrieved 6 May 2024. Johnson & Raab (2003) proposed a variant of the fluency heuristic when alternatives are sequentially retrieved rather than simultaneously perceived: 'Take-the-first heuristic: Choose the first alternative that comes to mind.'
^Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0024-F16D-5. PMID21126183. Retrieved 6 May 2024. For two alternatives, the heuristic is defined as (Goldstein & Gigerenzer 2002): 'Recognition heuristic: If one of two alternatives is recognized and the other is not, then infer that the recognized alternative has the higher value with respect to the criterion.'
^Gigerenzer, Gerd (2008). "Why Heuristics Work". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 3 (1): 20–29. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2008.00058.x. JSTOR40212224. PMID26158666. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Recognition heuristic (Goldstein & Gigerenzer, 2002). If one of two alternatives is recognized, infer that it has the higher value on the criterion.
^Gigerenzer, Gerd (2008). "Why Heuristics Work". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 3 (1): 20–29. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2008.00058.x. JSTOR40212224. PMID26158666. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Fluency heuristic (Schooler & Hertwig, 2005). If one alternative is recognized faster than another, infer that it has the higher value on the criterion.
^Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0024-F16D-5. PMID21126183. Retrieved 6 May 2024. 'Fluency heuristic: If both alternatives are recognized but one is recognized faster, then infer that this alternative has the higher value with respect to the criterion.' The fluency heuristic builds on earlier work on fluency (Jacoby & Dallas 1981).
^Gigerenzer, Gerd (2008). "Why Heuristics Work". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 3 (1): 20–29. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2008.00058.x. JSTOR40212224. PMID26158666. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Tallying (unit-weight linear model; Dawes, 1979). To estimate a criterion, do not estimate weights but simply count the number of favoring cues.
^Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0024-F16D-5. PMID21126183. Retrieved 6 May 2024. [Social heuristics] include imitation heuristics, tit-for-tat, the social-circle heuristic, and averaging the judgments of others to exploit the 'wisdom of crowds' (Hertwig & Herzog 2009). Imitate the-successful, for instance, speeds up learning of cue orders and can find orders that excel take-the-best's validity order (Garcia-Retamero et al. 2009).
^Gigerenzer, Gerd (2008). "Why Heuristics Work". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 3 (1): 20–29. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2008.00058.x. JSTOR40212224. PMID26158666. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Imitate the majority (Boyd & Richerson, 2005). Look at a majority of people in your peer group, and imitate their behavior. Imitate the successful (Boyd &Richerson, 2005). Look for the most successful person and imitate his or her behavior.
^Mondak, Jeffery (1993). "Public Opinion and Heuristic Processing of Source Cues". Political Behavior. 15 (2): 167–92. doi:10.1007/BF00993852. JSTOR586448. Retrieved 7 May 2024. [I]f a person believes that audience consensus usually offers accurate guidance as to the merits of persuasive messages, then positive audience reaction to a specific message would prompt the individual to accept the speaker's claims. The cognitive heuristic is the holding that audience consensus in this case is representative of situations in which audience consensus provides a reliable guide (Axsom, Yates, and Chaiken, 1987).
^Krist, Christina; Schwarz, Christina; Reiser, Brian (2018). "Identifying Essential Epistemic Heuristics for Guiding Mechanistic Reasoning in Science Learning". Journal of the Learning Sciences. 28 (2): 160–205. doi:10.1080/10508406.2018.1510404. Retrieved 11 May 2024. The first epistemic heuristic essential to mechanistic reasoning is that students think across scalar levels. Most definitions of mechanistic reasoning (e.g., Grotzer & Perkins, 2000; Machamer et al., 2000) use the term underlying to describe the kinds of things that must be identified and characterized in order to explain a target phenomenon.
^Krist, Christina; Schwarz, Christina; Reiser, Brian (2018). "Identifying Essential Epistemic Heuristics for Guiding Mechanistic Reasoning in Science Learning". Journal of the Learning Sciences. 28 (2): 160–205. doi:10.1080/10508406.2018.1510404. Retrieved 11 May 2024. second epistemic heuristic: identifying and characterizing relevant elements at a scalar level below that of the target phenomenon.... we use the term factor to refer generally to the relevant elements at the scalar level below that of the aggregate phenomenon. Similarly, we refer generally to the intellectual work involved in characterizing the relevant properties, rules, and behaviors of factors as unpacking those factors.
^Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. doi:10.1093/bjps/axu028. JSTOR24562967. Retrieved 5 May 2024. However, a different meaning of 'heuristic' was invoked in psychology with the Gestalt theorists, and later with Simon's notion of 'satisficing'.
^Gigerenzer, Gerd (2008). "Why Heuristics Work". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 3 (1): 20–29. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2008.00058.x. JSTOR40212224. PMID26158666. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Satisficing (Simon, 1955; Todd & Miller, 1999). Search through alternatives, and choose the first one that exceeds your aspiration level.
^Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. doi:10.1093/bjps/axu028. JSTOR24562967. Retrieved 5 May 2024. [T]he representativeness heuristic[:]Probabilities are evaluated by the degree to which one thing or event is representative of (resembles) another; the higher the representativeness (resemblance) the higher the probability estimation[.]
^Lu, Yun; Vasko, Francis; Drummond, Trevor; Vasko, Lisa (2014). "Probability & Perception: The Representativeness Heuristic in Action". The Mathematics Teacher. 108 (2): 126–31. doi:10.5951/mathteacher.108.2.0126. Retrieved 5 May 2024. The belief that a sequence such as 11111111111111111111 is less probable than a sequence such as 66234441536125563152 is often referred to as the representativeness heuristic (Kahneman and Tversky 1972; Shaughnessy 1977, 1992).
^Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. doi:10.1093/bjps/axu028. JSTOR24562967. Retrieved 5 May 2024. [T]he availability heuristic[:]The frequency of a class or the probability of an event is assessed according to the ease with which instances or associations can be brought to mind (Tversky and Kahneman [1974])
^ abcWacquant, Loic (1985). "Heuristic Models in Marxian Theory". Social Forces. 64 (1): 17–45. doi:10.2307/2578970. JSTOR2578970. Retrieved 6 May 2024. In building social theory, Marx used not one (as generally regarded) but three heuristic models: base-superstructure, organic totality, and dialectical development.
^Petersen, Michael (2015). "Evolutionary Political Psychology: On the Origin and Structure of Heuristics and Biases in Politics". Political Psychology. 36 (1): 45–78. doi:10.1111/pops.12237. JSTOR43783844. Retrieved 5 May 2024. One of the political heuristics that has been most studied from an evolutionary perspective is the deservingness heuristic.... the deservingness heuristic is the psychological tendency of people to base their opinions about welfare programs on the efforts of the recipients. Specifically, the heuristic motivates people to support welfare benefits to recipients who are represented as victims of bad luck and reject benefits to recipients who are represented as lazy.
^Todd, P; Dieckmann, A (2004). "Heuristics for Ordering Cue Search in Decision Making". Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems: 13–18. Retrieved 6 May 2024. The even simpler Minimalist heuristic, which searches through available cues in a random order[.]
8. Generation of new hypotheses[...] Survival of the fittest, which is perhaps the grandest of all optimality principles, was formulated as a qualitative, conceptual cornerstone in Darwin's (1859) theory of evolution. Entropy and least action principles are other broad optimality laws[...] Equilibrium notions and homeostatic behavior can also be interpreted as general optimality principles, covering wide domains of application.
^ abRomanycia, M.; Pelletier, F. (1985). "What is a heuristic?". Computational Intelligence. 1 (1): 47–58. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8640.1985.tb00058.x. Retrieved 7 May 2024. Minsky's (1961 b) subject bibliography lists Polya (1945) as the earliest reference to heuristic in the AI literature.
^Groner, Rudolf; Groner, Marina; Bischof, Walter (2014). Methods of heuristics. Routledge. The methods of analysis and synthesis appear later in almost every treatise on problem-solving methods [from Pappus].
^ abcdeChow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. doi:10.1093/bjps/axu028. JSTOR24562967. Retrieved 5 May 2024. [I]nfluential heuristics researchers, including George Polya, Herbert Simon, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, and Gerd Gigerenzer.
^ abcHughes, Barnabas (1974). "Heuristic Teaching in Mathematics". Educational Studies in Mathematics. 5 (3): 291–99. doi:10.1007/BF00684704. JSTOR3482053. Retrieved 5 May 2024. The most important work in heuristic teaching has been done by George Polya. His How To Solve It has been a best seller since its first printing in 1945-copies sold number in the hundreds of thousands. Complementary to How To Solve It are two other works, each in two volumes: Mathematical Discovery and Mathematics And Plausible Reasoning.
^Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. doi:10.1093/bjps/axu028. JSTOR24562967. Retrieved 5 May 2024. 'To choose a ripe cantaloupe, press the spot on the candidate cantaloupe where it was attached to the plant and smell it; if the spot smells like the inside of a cantaloupe, it's probably ripe' (Pearl [1984])
^Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. doi:10.1093/bjps/axu028. JSTOR24562967. Retrieved 5 May 2024. 'Start in the centre square when beginning a game of tic-tac-toe' (Dunbar [1998])
^ abcdeHughes, Barnabas (1974). "Heuristic Teaching in Mathematics". Educational Studies in Mathematics. 5 (3): 291–99. doi:10.1007/BF00684704. JSTOR3482053. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Mauritz Johnson (1966) observes that the idea is hardly new, and that, ignoring the classical accreditation of its use to Socrates in the Meno, one finds an early discussion of discovery learning by David P. Page in his Theory and Practice of Teaching in 1847 as well as by later writers, Herbert Spencer in 1860, Frank and Charles McMurry in 1897, and William Chandler Babley in 1905.
^Hey, Spencer (2016). "Heuristics and Meta-Heuristics in Scientific Judgement". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 67 (2): 471–95. doi:10.1093/bjps/axu045. JSTOR43946078. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Lakatos ([1965]) also adopted the term to characterize his methodology of scientific research programmes, which would lead researchers to either avoid or pursue certain lines of inquiry 'negative' and 'positive' heuristics, respectively).
^Hey, Spencer (2016). "Heuristics and Meta-Heuristics in Scientific Judgement". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 67 (2): 471–95. doi:10.1093/bjps/axu045. JSTOR43946078. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Wimsatt's ([1980], [1981], [2006], [2007]) work on reductionist modelling strategies - also built upon Simon's programme of bounded rationality - provides an alternative starting point that is more useful for understanding the role that heuristics play in science.
^Groner, Rudolf; Groner, Marina (1991). "Heuristische versus algorithmische Orientierung als Dimension des individuellen kognitiven Stils" [Heuristic versus algorithmic orientation as a dimension of the individual cognitive style]. In K. Grawe; N. Semmer; R. Hänni (eds.). Über die richtige Art, Psychologie zu betreiben [About the right way to do psychology] (in German). Göttingen: Hogrefe. ISBN978-3-80170-415-5.
^Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W. (2011). "Heuristic Decision Making". Annual Review of Psychology. 62: 451–482. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145346. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0024-F16D-5. PMID21126183. Retrieved 6 May 2024. The collection of heuristics and building blocks an individual or a species has at its disposal for constructing heuristics, together with the core mental capacities that building blocks exploit, has been called the adaptive toolbox (Gigerenzer et al. 1999).
^Epstein, S.; Pacini, R.; Denes-Raj, V.; Heier, H. (1996). "Individual differences in intuitive-experiential and analytical-rational thinking styles". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 71 (2): 390–405. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.71.2.390. PMID8765488.
^Chen, Serena; Duckworth, Kimberly; Chaiken, Shelly (1999). "Motivated Heuristic and Systematic Processing". Psychological Inquiry. 10 (1): 44–49. doi:10.1207/s15327965pli1001_6. JSTOR1449522. Retrieved 5 May 2024. [T]he heuristic mode is constrained by basic principles of knowledge activation and use—namely, availability, accessibility, and applicability (e.g., Higgins, 1996). That is, heuristic processing requires that heuristics are stored in memory (i.e., available), are retrieved from memory (i.e., accessible), and are relevant (i.e., applicable) to the judgmental task at hand.
^Bach, Lee (2002). "Chapter 7: Heuristic Scholar: Heuristic Inquiry and the Heuristic Scholar". Counterpoints. 183: 91–102. JSTOR42976833. Retrieved 6 May 2024. Heuristics is a qualitative model of research design developed from humanistic psychology traditions. It embraces the significance of human experience and embodies the spirit of Buber's (1958) "I-Thou" mutuality. The heuristic model is inherently phenomenological in nature, and it seeks to uncover the meaning and essence of human experience from the frame of reference of the experiencing person.
^Johnson, Eric E. (2006). "Calibrating Patent Lifetimes"(PDF). Santa Clara Computer & High Technology Law Journal. 22: 269–314. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2011-10-05.
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^Bodenhausen, Galen V.; et al. (1999). "On the Dialectics of Discrimination: Dual Processes in Social Stereotyping". In Chaiken, Shelly; Trope, Yaacov (eds.). Dual-process Theories in Social Psychology. New York, NY: Guilford Press. pp. 271–292. ISBN978-1-57230-421-5.
^Gökçen, Sinan (20 November 2007). "Pictures in Our Heads". European Roma Rights Centre. Archived from the original on 14 July 2015. Retrieved 24 March 2015.
^Chow, Sheldon (2015). "Many Meanings of 'Heuristic'". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 66 (4): 977–1016. doi:10.1093/bjps/axu028. JSTOR24562967. Retrieved 5 May 2024. Rather, as rules, heuristics are procedures that can be specified and applied in a given situation.
Further reading
How To Solve It: Modern Heuristics, Zbigniew Michalewicz and David B. Fogel, Springer Verlag, 2000. ISBN3-540-66061-5
