What is the difference between a heuristic and an algorithm?

Question

What is the difference between a heuristic and an algorithm?

Answer 1

Heuristic, in a nutshell is an "Educated guess". Wikipedia explains it nicely. At the end, a "general acceptance" method is taken as an optimal solution to the specified problem.

Heuristic is an adjective for experience-based techniques that help in problem solving, learning and discovery. A heuristic method is used to rapidly come to a solution that is hoped to be close to the best possible answer, or 'optimal solution'. Heuristics are "rules of thumb", educated guesses, intuitive judgments or simply common sense. A heuristic is a general way of solving a problem. Heuristics as a noun is another name for heuristic methods.

In more precise terms, heuristics stand for strategies using readily accessible, though loosely applicable, information to control problem solving in human beings and machines.

While an algorithm is a method containing finite set of instructions used to solving a problem. The method has been proven mathematically or scientifically to work for the problem. There are formal methods and proofs.

Heuristic algorithm is an algorithm that is able to produce an acceptable solution to a problem in many practical scenarios, in the fashion of a general heuristic, but for which there is no formal proof of its correctness.