metaheuristic

A metaheuristic is a heuristic method for solving a very general class of computational problems by combining user given black-box procedures — usually heuristics themselves — in a hopefully efficient way. The name combines the  Greek prefix "meta" ("beyond", here in the sense of "higher level") and "heuristic" (from ευρισκειν, heuriskein, "to find").
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<algorithm, complexity, computability> A top-level general strategy which guides other heuristics to search for feasible solutions in domains where the task is hard.
Metaheuristics have been most generally applied to problems classified as NP-Hard or NP-Complete by the theory of computational complexity. However, metaheuristics would also be applied to other combinatorial optimisation problems for which it is known that a polynomial-time solution exists but is not practical.
Examples of metaheuristics are Tabu Search, simulated annealing, genetic algorithms and memetic algorithms.
(1997-10-30)