heuristic
C1CEFR level
55/100Rarity: uncommon
TechnicalRegister
General noun
A practical rule of thumb that aids problem-solving without guaranteeing a correct result.
Judging distance by haziness is a useful heuristic, though fog can badly mislead it.
Business noun
A mental shortcut or rule of thumb that speeds up judgment at the cost of occasional error.
The team relied on a crude heuristic, hiring only from three universities, and never noticed the talent it screened out.
Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.
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