Randomized Algorithms in "Primitive" Culture s or What is the Oracle Complexity of a Dead Chicken ? Jeffrey Shallit * Department of Computer Scienc e University of Waterlo o Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G 1 shallit@graceland .uwaterloo .c a 1 Introductio n Newton said, "If I have seen further it is by standing upon the shoulders of Giants ." 1 But to o often in the theoretical computer science community, we see ourselves as pioneers, covering untro d territory, without realizing that others may have gone before us . It is my point in this note to kneel down for a moment in the wilderness of discovery, and not e the outlines of ancient foundations buried under our frontier outpost . I will show that some of th e concepts of randomized algorithms can quite legitimately be said to have their origins in the beliefs of two "primitive" 2 societies : namely, the Naskapi and the Azande . Randomized algorithms are of great interest in theoretical computer science . Although some of the basic ideas can be traced back as far as Laplace's 1812 analysis of the BufFon needle problem [6 ] and Lord Kelvin's randomized simulation techniques
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