Talk:Heuristic function

Merge into Heuristic (computer science)
This article says that a heuristic function can also be called simply a heuristic. But there already exists an article Heuristic (computer science) and it feels unnecessary to have two articles for almost the same thing. Since "heuristic" feels like the slightly broader concept (if there is any difference at all), I suggest that this page is merged into Heuristic (computer science). —Kri (talk) 13:33, 7 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I also agree that these two sections should be combined into one, as the heuristic function is only a subset of the Heuristic section -Superdyoll (talk) 17:46, 28 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree

Dome. - üser:Altenmann >t 02:00, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Dubious discussion of branching factor/partial order on heuristics.
Branching factor is something intrinsic to the search tree, not to an algorithm. One could think of an "effective branching factor" of an algorithm as the average number of children of any node that the algorithm explores; a better heuristic would indeed have such effecting branching factor lower. However this would be a total order, not partial order. I think whoever wrote that part was confused. - —This_is_a_bad_username — Preceding undated comment added 09:50, 19 June 2015 (UTC)