Where does search collide?

In constitutional law a search is an act by the state that intrudes on a person, their property, or a space where they reasonably expect privacy, and which the law therefore constrains. The doctrine traces to Entick v. Carrington (1765), an English judgment holding that officers of the Crown could not seize a man's papers without lawful authority, a ruling later treated as a foundation of the Fourth Amendment. Katz v. United States (1967) set out the modern test, holding that the protection turns on a reasonable expectation of privacy rather than physical trespass alone. This referent is a legal event judged against a constitutional standard, not an algorithm exploring a state space, a buyer canvassing prices, or an eye scanning a display.[1][2]

Unit

A single act of state intrusion, judged lawful or unlawful against a constitutional standard

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Assessed case by case by courts against the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test and the warrant requirement

In economics search is the costly activity of gathering information about prices, wages, or trading partners when a market does not clear instantly and offers vary. Stigler's 1961 The economics of information first modelled this formally, showing that a buyer samples sellers up to the point where the expected gain from one more quotation equals its cost. The idea was later extended into the search theory of unemployment and matching by Mortensen and Pissarides, which explains why workers and jobs, or buyers and sellers, take time to pair up. This referent is an economic decision about how much to look before settling, not a court's finding, a computed path through a problem, or an eye locating a target.[3][4]

Unit

One agent's information-gathering effort, scaled by the cost and expected payoff of an additional inquiry

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Operationalised through reservation prices or reservation wages, offer-arrival rates, and the duration of search spells

In artificial intelligence and computer science search is the systematic exploration of a space of possible states or configurations to find one that solves a problem. Hart, Nilsson, and Raphael's 1968 A formal basis for the heuristic determination of minimum cost paths gave the field its A* method, which uses an estimate of the remaining cost to guide the exploration toward a goal efficiently. Newell and Simon's 1976 Computer science as empirical inquiry set out the broader claim that intelligent action can be understood as search through a problem space by a symbol system. This referent is a computational procedure over abstract states, not a constitutional event, a shopper comparing offers, or a visual scan of a scene.[5][6]

Unit

One traversal of a state space, counted by the nodes expanded or states visited

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Evaluated by nodes expanded, time and memory used, path cost, and whether the method is complete and optimal

In cognitive psychology visual search is the task of scanning a display to find a target item among distractor items, used to probe how attention selects information. Treisman and Gelade's 1980 A feature-integration theory of attention showed that a target defined by a single feature seems to pop out at once, while a target defined by a combination of features must be examined item by item, so response time rises with the number of distractors. This referent is a perceptual and attentional process in a viewer, timed in milliseconds, not a legal intrusion, a market inquiry, or a computer's exploration of states.[7]

Unit

One search trial, from display onset to the observer's detection response

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Measured by reaction time and accuracy as a function of set size, yielding the search slope in milliseconds per item