  The oracle chooses a function out of a known set of functions and gives to
the player a black box that, given an argument, evaluates the function. The
player should find out a certain character of the function through function
evaluation. This is the typical problem addressed by the quantum algorithms. In
former theoretical work, we showed that a quantum algorithm requires the number
of function evaluations of a classical algorithm that knows in advance 50% of
the information that specifies the solution of the problem. Here we check that
this 50% rule holds for the main quantum algorithms. In the structured
problems, a classical algorithm with the advanced information, to identify the
missing information should perform one function evaluation. The speed up is
exponential since a classical algorithm without advanced information should
perform an exponential number of function evaluations. In unstructured database
search, a classical algorithm that knows in advance 50% of the n bits of the
database location, to identify the n/2 missing bits should perform Order(2
power n/2) function evaluations. The speed up is quadratic since a classical
algorithm without advanced information should perform Order(2 power n) function
evaluations. The 50% rule identifies the problems solvable with a quantum sped
up in an entirely classical way, in fact by comparing two classical algorithms,
with and without the advanced information.
