Exploration vs Exploitation
FleetingOften in metaheuristic, there is a compromise to take between exploring the space of possibilities, almost randomly against exploiting a possible good lead.
Exploring gives us hindsight and discovers good leads while exploiting gives us good solutions but makes us miss possibly global optimums.
I think this is also true in problem solving in general. We tend to look randomly at first to find inspiration, then find possible paths to take and follow (exploit) one path in particular. I case the solution is not enough, I think the difficulty is to get back then to the exploratory phase to find new paths to take. We tend to focus on what is in front of us and forget about the exploratory phase quite easily.
Notes linking here
- debate and exploration vs exploitation
- expand and compress
- exploration and then exploitation development
- problem thinking vs solution thinking