System Dynamics Glossary
What is the meaning of Heuristic?
A heuristic is a higher order psychological adaptation,
a useful mental shortcut, an approximation, or a rule-of-thumb, specialised
for certain classes of problem, for guiding search and enabling
adaptive decision making. Simple heuristics can be used singly and
in combination to account for a great variety of higher
order mental processes that may at first glance seem to
require more complex explanation. This observation led Gigerenzer et. al.,
(1999) to formulate the basic idea of the adaptive toolbox:
the collection of specialised cognitive mechanisms that evolution has built
into the human mind for specific domains of inference and
reasoning, including fast and frugal heuristics (Gigerenzer, 1999: 25-31). Also
see adaptive toolbox.
Books Related to Heuristic
Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic and
Amos Tversky, "Judgment under Uncertainty : Heuristics and Biases".
—More
information on Judgment under Uncertainty : Heuristics and Biases
M.
R. Garey and D. S. Johnson, "Computers and Intractability :
A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness (Series of Books
in the Mathematical Sciences)".
—More information on Computers and
Intractability : A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness (Series
of Books in the Mathematical Sciences)
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