From some research from the
Merriam-Webster online dictionary I found that heuristics is a process of solving a problem, learning something or even making a discovery by trial and error methods.
Dictionary.com also has a very similar definition which is encouraging a person to learn, discover, understand or solve problems on his or her own, as by experimenting, evaluating possible answers or solutions, or trial by error. After reading the definitions from multiple sources it makes me think that heuristics is to keep trying to do something in multiple ways until something works. I am in an engineering major so it is a really good skill to use heuristics to solve problems because there is never one way to accomplish something. I can think of an example of heuristics that I did last semester. I was in physics and the homework was sometimes extremely difficult so I would do the problem then find another example from the book that was the same thing but it was backwards. This make me fully understand what I was doing because I preformed the problem in multiple ways. Here is a picture of a physics problem for example.
A global example of heuristics is energy when I think about it. Since there is a rising population of people every year on Earth scientists and engineers are trying to find ways to make clean renewable energy. There a lot of ideas for renewable energy that work like solar and wind but I think that eventually after a lot of trials and experiments they will perfect or discover a genius way to use energy. This picture shows how we can get energy from algae and I think that this is a good global example on how we use heuristics. Using the algae and water heated by the sun it is then harvested and then by some kind of engineering system it is turned into useable fuel and electricity.
