Candidate solution

In optimization and other branches of mathematics, and in search algorithms (a topic in computer science), a candidate solution is a member of a set of possible solutions to a given problem. A candidate solution does not have to be a likely or reasonable solution to the problem—it is simply in the set that satisfies all constraints; that is, it is in the set of feasible solutions. Algorithms for solving various types of optimization problems often narrow the set of candidate solutions down to a subset of the feasible solutions, whose points remain as candidate solutions while the other feasible solutions are henceforth excluded as candidates.