# Yao's test: Wikis

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# Encyclopedia

In cryptography and the theory of computation, Yao's test is a test defined by Andrew Chi-Chih Yao in 1982 [1], against pseudo-random sequences. A sequence of words passes Yao's test if an attacker with reasonable computational power cannot distinguish it from a sequence generated uniformly at random.

## Formal statement

### Boolean circuits

Let P be a polynomial, and S = {Sk}k be a collection of sets Sk of P(k)-bit long sequences, and for each k, let μk be a probability distribution on Sk, and PC be a polynomial. A predicting collection C = {Ck} is a collection of boolean circuits of size less than PC(k). Let $p_{k,S}^C$ be the probability that on input s, a string randomly selected in Sk with probability μ(s), Ck(s) = 1, i.e.

$p_{k,S}^C={\mathcal P}[C_k(s)=1 | s\in S_k\text{ with probability }\mu_k(s)]$

Moreover, let $p_{k,U}^C$ be the probability that Ck(s) = 1 on input s a P(k)-bit long sequence selected uniformly at random in {0,1}P(k). We say that S passes Yao's test if for all predicting collection C, for all but finitely many k, for all polynomial Q :

$|p_{k,S}^C-p_{k,U}^C|<\frac{1}{Q(k)}$

### Probabilistic formulation

As in the case of the next-bit test, the predicting collection used in the above definition can be replaced by a probabilistic Turing machine, working in polynomial time. This also yields a strictly stronger definition of Yao's test (see Adleman's theorem). Indeed, One could decide undecidable properties of the pseudo-random sequence with the non-uniform circuits described above, whereas BPP machines can always be simulated by exponential-time deterministic Turing machines.

## References

1. ^ Andrew Chi-Chih Yao. Theory and applications of trapdoor functions. In Proceedings of the 23rd IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, 1982.