What's the meaning of first-cut Techniques?

Question

The 3rd part of "Algorithms Design Techniques and Analysis" wrote by M H Alsuwaiyel is named "First-Cut Techniques" including the greedy Approach and Graph Traversal. And I want to know the meaning of the "first-cut Techniques" .I couldn't find it by searching in Google,so I ask for help here.

Answer 1

First-cut Techniques means the approach that comes to your mind first time you see a problem. For example, in this graph, the edges represent path from one node to other and the values represent cost of taking the path. Let's say, you put a baby on node 1 and tell it to go to node 3 using a path that costs minimum. What it's gonna come up with?

It would take 1-4 edge as it has the lowest cost. Then it would take 4-3 edge to go to node 3. But you can clearly see that if the baby would've taken 1-2 and then 2-3 edge, it would cost less. First-cut technique is what a baby would do. That is, without considering the future path, it would take the lowest cost path it can find. Taking the best decision for that instant moment is called Greedy approach. It might seem that, greedy approach doesn't work, but you'll see, at times, greedy approach gives you the best solution. Most of the graph traversal and shortest path algorithms are greedy.

Hope this helps. Good luck!