heuristic evaluation function

Terms from Artificial Intelligence: humans at the heart of algorithms

Page numbers are for draft copy at present; they will be replaced with correct numbers when final book is formatted. Chapter numbers are correct and will not change now.

An heuristic evaluation function is some form of guess at an intermediate state about the eventual outcome of a search. This is used in a heuristic search to act as a guide as to the best order to explore many different options. For example, whilst searching for shortest routes between places, we might use the Euclidean distance between two cities as a heuristic for the eventual shortest road distance well before we explore the potential routes between them.

Used on Chap. 1: page 6; Chap. 4: pages 62, 63, 65, 70, 71, 72, 78, 79, 80, 81; Chap. 6: page 125; Chap. 7: page 144; Chap. 10: page 199; Chap. 11: pages 222, 224, 225, 226, 228, 236, 237; Chap. 12: page 268; Chap. 13: page 296; Chap. 14: pages 337, 338; Chap. 15: pages 350, 352, 364; Chap. 16: pages 371, 381; Chap. 18: pages 423, 425, 429, 436; Chap. 19: page 476; Chap. 21: pages 513, 515, 523, 529; Chap. 22: page 539

Also known as heuristic evaluation, heuristic information, heuristics