Brought to mind the parable of the hunter guide shaman: "The livelihood of an ancient indian tribe was buffalo hunting. If the hunters came back with a small a

Brought to mind the parable of the hunter guide shaman: "The livelihood of an ancient indian tribe was buffalo hunting. If the hunters came back with a small amount of kill or, unimaginable, empty-handed, from their Springtime hunts, the village would go mostly hungry for the next four months and many people would die. Luckily, before each hunt the village's shaman gave the head of the hunters a map with lines drawn on a hide that will guide the group to where the buffalo is. Without this map, the hunters wouldn't find where the buffalo gathered on the Great Plains. A young hunter was curious about how the shaman always knew where the buffalo gathered, so before the Springtime Hunting Festival, he hid in the shaman's tipi and secretly watched jim as he prepared the map. There were many steps involved but in essence the shaman did the following: After calling on divine powers he crumpled a large raw piece of hide that was softened with oils. That was it! Then the lines to guide the hunters appeared correctly drawn by gods' will every time the map was created." I usually employ a similar random search strategy (e.g. http://www.jmlr.org/papers/volume13/bergstra12a/bergstra12a.pdf http://www.jmlr.org/papers/volume13/bergstra12a/bergstra12a....) to select a book when I'm at a library, though not as extensive as the method described in the article.