Search Heuristics

Abstract

In the summary of Chapter 2, we have indicated that it would be desirable to apply heuristic methods which perform better than simple intuitive ones. As for the knapsack problem, we already identified two heuristic ways of obtaining a fairly good solution. The principle behind, however, remained the same in both versions: We constructed one single solution by successively adding solution components (items) according to certain priorities. Of course, this principle is generalizable and thus not limited to the knapsack problem. Therefore we will refer to such methods as “constructive heuristics” in the course of this book.