What is heuristics?

Before I got here, I friend was asking me about this question when he saw the title of a work that I planned to carry on for my PhD. I can't give him an answer at that time as the topic is quite alien to me too. But now, after three months reading on the topic, here is what I can say about heuristics.

Heuristic comes from a greek word meaning 'to find'. What to find? Well, anything you would like to find, and it is common to the search activity in the optimization process. A simple analogy that I came across recently, you can think of heuristics (the word can be used with or without 's' like physics) as a tour guide. A tour guide is good at showing you the great place where you can visit but he might miss some of the interesting places to visit. Same with heuristics, it can provide you with the solutions but the solution might not necessarily be the best solution.

Adding the word meta to it, it becomes metaheuristics. Metaheuristics are targetted at combinatorial problems; applied maths and computer science. Sounds tough huh? Well, it's what I'm researching on at this moment. My supervisor suggested that I look into the Simulated Annealing method. Once I got through with that, it would be easy to understand other methods like tabu search, hill climbing and so on.

I came across a thesis that apply Simulated Annealing in Sports Scheduling. The thesis was submitted in May for his PhD in the US. I sure respect him for getting his PhD in the States as I heard getting a PhD over there is tougher than here as they have got to go through examination before they can actually carry on with their research work. I am currently reading the thesis and I must admit that I don't understand or have yet to understand the content of the thesis. I guess I'd have to do further research, to read and read until I understand what he is talking about. After all, it's what research is all about. GALI LAGI...!