No, that's just not true. A heuristic is a procedure that gives no guarantee of a correct answer. An algorithm is a deterministic procedure that does guarantee a correct answer. Heuristics are very useful in making difficult decisions that don't have definite answers, but they are not algorithms.

Erm. Algorithms aren't necessarily deterministic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondeterministic_algorithm

Primality testing is a very good example of a useful algorithm that gives an answer that is probably correct.

Thank you for the correction. I'd been using terminology ineffectively. The way I was taught it was:

- An algorithm is a step-by-step process for transforming any valid input into a specific valid output. - A heuristic is a process that brings you closer to something that looks like an answer, but does not necessarily find the best possible answer.