Probabilistic estimation of the algebraic degree of Boolean functions

The algebraic degree is an important parameter of Boolean functions used in cryptography. When a function in a large number of variables is not given explicitly in algebraic normal form, it might not be feasible to compute its degree. Instead, one can try to estimate the degree using probabilistic tests. We propose a probabilistic test for deciding whether the algebraic degree of a Boolean function $f$ is below a certain value $k$. The test involves picking an affine space of dimension $k$ and testing whether the values on $f$ on that space sum up to zero. If $deg(f)<k$, then $f$ will always pass the test, otherwise it will sometimes pass and sometimes fail the test, depending on which affine space was chosen. The probability of failing the proposed test is closely related to the number of monomials of degree $k$ in a polynomial $g$, averaged over all the polynomials $g$ which are affine equivalent to $f$. We initiate the study of the probability of failing the proposed ``$deg(f)<k$'' test. We show that in the particular case when the degree of $f$ is actually equal to $k$, the probability will be in the interval $(0.288788, 0.5]$, and therefore a small number of runs of the test is sufficient to give, with very high probability, the correct answer. Exact values of this probability for all the polynomials in 8 variables were computed using the representatives listed by Hou and by Langevin and Leander.