Q3Principles of Artificial Intelligence
Question
2 marks
What is a heuristic function?
Answer
A heuristic function is a mathematically estimated evaluation function that aggressively predicts the absolute lowest remaining cost from the current state to the ultimate goal state.
In informed search algorithms like A*, the heuristic function, denoted strictly as , mathematically guesses the remaining distance to the goal (e.g., straight-line Euclidean distance in a maze). It violently prunes the massive search tree by forcing the algorithm to aggressively explore only the most mathematically promising mathematical paths.