Phenomenological renormalization group methods

Some renormalization group approaches have been proposed during the last fe w years which are close in spirit to the Nightingale phenomenological proce dure. In essence, by exploiting the finite size scaling hypothesis, the app roximate critical behavior of model on infinite lattice is obtained through the exact computation of some thermal quantities of the model on finite cl usters. In this work some of these methods are reviewed, namely the mean fi eld renormalization group, the effective field renormalization group and th e finite size scaling renormalization group procedures. Although special em phasis is given to the mean field renormalization group (since it has been, up to now, much more used to study a wide variety of different systems) a discussion of their potentialities and interrelations to other methods is a lso presented.