AP® Psychology · Unit 2 · Topic 2.2
Algorithms and Heuristics
Watch it explained
- How it worksHow does an algorithm grind through every option while a heuristic jumps to one?
- Worked exampleShow me the search tree for unscrambling the letters SPLOYCHY by algorithm and by heuristic.
- How it worksWalk me through the availability heuristic making plane crashes feel more common than they are.
- Common mistakeWhy isn't the representativeness heuristic a reliable way to judge probability?
Check yourself
Your turn1 of 2
To unscramble the letters in a word puzzle, one player tries every single possible letter combination systematically until finding the right word, guaranteed to eventually succeed. Another player instead guesses based on common letter patterns they recognize, arriving at an answer faster but sometimes wrong. What best distinguishes these two approaches?End of topic.