trial and error

noun

|Updated on: 15 Aug 2018

Definition of trial and error

: a finding out of the best way to reach a desired result or a correct solution by trying out one or more ways or means and by noting and eliminating errors or causes of failure; also : the trying of one thing or another until something succeeds

See trial and error defined for kids

Recent Examples of trial and error from the Web

After 12 months of trial and error, the system, which soared back to life in the Premier League as Chelsea were crowned champions in 2017, was beginning to bear fruit for England.

— SI.com, "90Min World Cup Fan Diaries: Starting to Believe," 8 July 2018
Did the fragility of tissue paper require copious trial and error?

— jacoba urist, Smithsonian, "Maya Freelon’s Immersive and Interactive Sculptures Bring Tissue Paper to Life," 21 June 2018
Saoirse Ronan gives a virtuoso performance as a high-school teen who is learning this through trial and error.

— jennifer vineyard, New York Times, "The Best TV Shows and Movies New to Netflix, Amazon and More in June," 1 June 2018
Chef Colin Wakeling had no experience with Italian food, but a process of trial and error led him to make some delicious meals at Ciao.

— nancy miller, The Courier-Journal, "Ciao Ristorante is Italian food with the ultimate Sicilian twist," 3 July 2018
Of course, not every curl cocktail works for everyone and finding one that's best for your hair can take a bit of trial and error.

— jihan forbes, Allure, "Five Editors Reveal Their Favorite Combinations of Curly-Hair Products," 2 July 2018
That experience — working alone, through trial and error, grabbing whatever instrument best suits the song and stacking layers of vocals, relying only on your ears and tastes to guide you — does funny things to a musician.

— michael hamad, courant.com, "If You Haven't Heard Of Musician Jonathan Something, You Will Soon," 5 July 2018
DeepMind’s researchers used a method of AI training that’s also becoming standard: reinforcement learning, which is basically training by trial and error at a huge scale.

— james vincent, The Verge, "DeepMind’s AI agents exceed ‘human-level’ gameplay in Quake III," 4 July 2018
Still, learning this information by trial and error proved to be much easier using the GQN's vector representation as an input—as compared to trying to learn based only on the raw video feed.

— timothy b. lee, Ars Technica, "Google researchers created an amazing scene-rendering AI," 29 June 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'trial and error.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.