The word "Heuristic"

CFA Level III Portfolio Management
#1

HEURISTIC or HEURISTICS…I keep seeing this word in Behavioral Finance and can’t find a good CFA definition. It seems they’re using it as another word for “simple” or “short cut” and google says it means “self learning”.

What is the best word or short phrase to replace “Heuristic” every time you see it, as it pertains to the CFA curriculum?

#2

rule of thumb

#3

I felt the same way trying to figure that word out. Essentially it means trial and error / coming to a solution in a non-technical way

#4

various definitions:

  1. encouraging a person to learn, discover, understand, or solve problems on his or her own, as by experimenting, evaluating possible answers or solutions, or by trial and error: e.g. a heuristic teaching method.
  2. of, pertaining to, or based on experimentation, evaluation, or trial-and-error methods.
  3. Computers, Mathematics. pertaining to a trial-and-error method of problem solving used when an algorithmic approach is impractical.
  4. (maths, science, philosophy) using or obtained by exploration of possibilities rather than by following set rules
  5. (computing) denoting a rule of thumb for solving a problem without the exhaustive application of an algorithm: a heuristic solution