this text has focused on the interaction of algorithms with data structures many of the algorithms presented in this text deal with search and how to organize data so searching can be done efficiently many problems involve searching for an answer among many possible solutionsnot all of which are correct sometimesthere are so many possibilitiesno algorithm can be written that will efficiently find correct solution amongst all the possible solutions in these caseswe may be able to use rule of thumbmost often called heuristic in computer scienceto eliminate some of these possibilities from our search space if the heuristic does not eliminate possible solutionsit may at least help us order the possible solutions so we look at better possible solutions firstwhatever better might mean in chap depth first search of graph was presented sometimes search spaces for graphs or other problems grow to such an enormous sizeit is impossible to blindly search for goal node this is where heuristic can come in handy this uses searching mazewhich is really just type of graphas an example to illustrate several search algorithms that are related to depth first or breadth first search several applications of these search algorithms are also presented or discussed heuristic search is often covered in texts on artificial intelligence [ as problems in ai are better understoodalgorithms arise that become more commonplace over time the heuristic algorithms presented in this are covered in more detail in an ai textbut as data sizes growheuristic search will become more and more necessary in all sorts of applications ai techniques may be useful in many search problems and so are covered in this to provide an introduction to search algorithms designed to deal with large or infinite search spaces goals by the end of this you will have been presented with examples of depth first and breadth first search hill climbingbest first searchand the (pronounced staralgorithm will also be presented in additionheuristics will be applied to the search in two person game playing as well (cspringer international publishing switzerland lee and hubbarddata structures and algorithms with pythonundergraduate topics in computer sciencedoi -- this copy belongs to 'acha