Metaheuristic

1 definition found

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  metaheuristic
       
           A top-level general
          strategy which guides other {heuristics} to search for
          feasible solutions in domains where the task is hard.
       


          Metaheuristics have been most generally applied to problems
          classified as {NP-Hard} or {NP-Complete} by the theory of
          {computational complexity}.  However, metaheuristics would
          also be applied to other {combinatorial} {optimisation}
          problems for which it is known that a {polynomial-time}
          solution exists but is not practical.
       
          Examples of metaheuristics are {Tabu Search}, {simulated
          annealing}, {genetic algorithms} and {memetic algorithms}.
       
          (1997-10-30)