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 in Chap. 1: page 4; Chap. 4: pages 45, 46, 48, 53, 54, 58, 59, 60; Chap. 6: page 93; Chap. 7: page 106; Chap. 10: page 143; Chap. 11: pages 159, 160, 161, 162, 164, 169, 170; Chap. 12: page 190; Chap. 13: page 207; Chap. 14: page 234; Chap. 15: pages 244, 245, 253; Chap. 16: pages 256, 263; Chap. 18: pages 292, 293, 295, 300; Chap. 19: page 326; Chap. 21: pages 351, 352, 357, 362; Chap. 22: page 368

Also known as heuristic evaluation, heuristic information, heuristics