[Fluffy]

Here is a questionary presented to those who seek job at google, you might recognise some of the problems, but nevermind.

info extracted from http://tihomir.org/c...-job-interview/

1. How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?

2. You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?

3. How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?

4. How would you find out if a machine’s stack grows up or down in memory?

5. Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.

6. How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?

7. You have to get from point A to point B. You don’t know if you can get there. What would you do?

8. Imagine you have a closet full of shirts. It’s very hard to find a shirt. So what can you do to organize your shirts for easy retrieval?

9. Every man in a village of 100 married couples has cheated on his wife. Every wife in the village instantly knows when a man other than her husband has cheated, but does not know when her own husband has. The village has a law that does not allow for adultery. Any wife who can prove that her husband is unfaithful must kill him that very day. The women of the village would never disobey this law. One day, the queen of the village visits and announces that at least one husband has been unfaithful. What happens?

10. In a country in which people only want boys, every family continues to have children until they have a boy. if they have a girl, they have another child. if they have a boy, they stop. what is the proportion of boys to girls in the country?

11. If the probability of observing a car in 30 minutes on a highway is 0.95, what is the probability of observing a car in 10 minutes (assuming constant default probability)?

12. If you look at a clock and the time is 3:15, what is the angle between the hour and the minute hands? (The answer to this is not zero!)

13. Four people need to cross a rickety rope bridge to get back to their camp at night. Unfortunately, they only have one flashlight and it only has enough light left for seventeen minutes. The bridge is too dangerous to cross without a flashlight, and it’s only strong enough to support two people at any given time. Each of the campers walks at a different speed. One can cross the bridge in 1 minute, another in 2 minutes, the third in 5 minutes, and the slow poke takes 10 minutes to cross. How do the campers make it across in 17 minutes?

14. You are at a party with a friend and 10 people are present including you and the friend. your friend makes you a wager that for every person you find that has the same birthday as you, you get $1; for every person he finds that does not have the same birthday as you, he gets $2. would you accept the wager?

15. How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?

16. You have eight balls all of the same size. 7 of them weigh the same, and one of them weighs slightly more. How can you find the ball that is heavier by using a balance and only two weighings?

17. You have five pirates, ranked from 5 to 1 in descending order. The top pirate has the right to propose how 100 gold coins should be divided among them. But the others get to vote on his plan, and if fewer than half agree with him, he gets killed. How should he allocate the gold in order to maximize his share but live to enjoy it? (Hint: One pirate ends up with 98 percent of the gold.)

Do you still think you have what it takes to work for Google?



I went on love with problem 17 when I kind of solved it this night.

[sceptic]

16 is cute

weigh 3 on each side of the scale, if they remain level, then the heavy one is in your hands, just weigh the remaining two and you will find the heavier one that way

if one set of 3 balls dips, then remove them and weigh two of the three balls, if they balance the heavy one is in your hand, if not it is the one that is lowest on the scales

[Gerben42]

Quote

9. Every man in a village of 100 married couples has cheated on his wife. Every wife in the village instantly knows when a man other than her husband has cheated, but does not know when her own husband has. The village has a law that does not allow for adultery. Any wife who can prove that her husband is unfaithful must kill him that very day. The women of the village would never disobey this law. One day, the queen of the village visits and announces that at least one husband has been unfaithful. What happens?

One woman will kill her husband, then since the cheating came as surprise to all the OTHER women, they will quickly realize that the man was innocent. The conclusion is that the queen was lying and tried to get rid of ALL the men.

So to the question what happens: The Queen gets killed.

[sceptic]

9


I think the queen says to all 100 women, how many men do you know have been unfaithful and all 100 say 99, therefore, they mass murder all the unfaithful men in the village

[Gerben42]

Quote

8. Imagine you have a closet full of shirts. It’s very hard to find a shirt. So what can you do to organize your shirts for easy retrieval?

I'm colorblind so I won't notice if shirt and rest-of-outfit don't match.

[sceptic]

12


seven and a half degrees

[Fluffy]

I knew 9 beforehand, and the real solution is that 100 days later every woman kills its husband. Similar to 17, you have to think what happens if only 2 woman, then 3 woman, then 4.....

[Joe de Balliol]

I like this set! I've seen a few of these before, or variants [9 [which I heard with unfaithful wives],10,13,17] - all beautiful in their way.

>.14. You are at a party with a friend and 10 people are present including you and the friend. your friend makes you a wager that for every person you find that has the same birthday as you, you get $1; for every person he finds that does not have the same birthday as you, he gets $2. would you accept the wager?

I assume this is either a trick question and you're celebrating a joint birthday party with your siblings, having been born one of nonuplets, or else the $2 he gets have nothing to do with you, in with case you can gain but not lose? It doesn't make sense.

>>7. You have to get from point A to point B. You don’t know if you can get there. What would you do?
I don't get this.

>.5. Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.
Look. On. Internet.

>.12. If you look at a clock and the time is 3:15, what is the angle between the hour and the minute hands? (The answer to this is not zero!)
The hour hand will be quarter of the way between three and four, so quarter of one twelfth of 360 degrees = 7.5 as has been reached.

>6. How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?
The minute hand goes round 24 times, compared to 2 times for the hour hand, so 22 total, but including midnight one day and the next, it'll be 23?

>.2. You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?
I don't know how a glass bender works, but I'd guess you hang onto one of the blades if it's not too sharp? And wouldn't your mass have to be *increased* to maintain your density?

>.8. Imagine you have a closet full of shirts. It’s very hard to find a shirt. So what can you do to organize your shirts for easy retrieval?
Either make the closet easier to find, or remove a couple of shirts so the closet is less full? Am not really sure what's expected

[Fluffy]

can someone help me with number 2?, I can't transate it properly.

nickell is a coin?

glass blender I have no idea of what it is

[Fluffy]

14 scares me a bit, when I think of it, killing everyone at the party so he doesn't find them comes to mind, is it bad idea?

[Joe de Balliol]

Fluffy, on Sep 21 2007, 04:53 AM, said:

14 scares me a bit, when I think of it, killing everyone at the party so he doesn't find them comes to mind, is it bad idea?

Yes. Ask their birthday first, and only kill the ones who don't share yours.

[sceptic]

14

I would not take the bet, it does not state where he can find people, so 1 person out of 364 will earn him $1

and 363 people out of 364 will earn the other one $726 on average

This wager sucks

[helene_t]

Fluffy, on Sep 21 2007, 10:23 AM, said:

11. If the probability of observing a car in 30 minutes on a highway is 0.95, what is the probability of observing a car in 10 minutes (assuming constant default probability)?

Could be anything from 0.317 to 0.95 depending on the model, but I suppose the correct answer is 0.6316 (assuming a Poisson model which is the most natural one).

[hrothgar]

sceptic, on Sep 21 2007, 02:13 PM, said:

14

I would not take the bet, it does not state where he can find people, so 1 person out of 364 will earn him $1

and 363 people out of 364 will earn the other one $726 on average

This wager sucks

I don't think that this problem is recounted accurately:

The "birthday problem" is a classic problem in combinatorics. However, this problem is just gibberish.

For what its worth, I know a number of people that I gone through Google's interview process, some of whom were offered jobs. The bulk of the interviewees state that Google had the worst interview process they ever encountered.

1. People with years of executive experience were being interviewed by random kids one year into their first job.

2. It was clear that none of the people conducting the interviews had ever seen the resumes in advance, nor did they have a clue about the roles and responsibilities for the jobs in question.

3. Interviews were randomly canceled or rescheduled at the last minute. The worst case that I heard about involved a friend of mine who took two days off work at Accenture to fly out to San Jose for the interviews. He arrived at Google campus and was told that his interview had been canceled and he should come back again next weeks. (And Google stiffed him for the plane fare / hotel room)

I made it through the Google phone screens and had the chance to interview in CA. After hearing the stories, I decided that the place was MUCH to screwed up to ever consider working for.

(BTW, Microsoft combines some vicious questions with an effective interviewing process)

[hrothgar]

Fluffy, on Sep 21 2007, 12:53 PM, said:

14 scares me a bit, when I think of it, killing everyone at the party so he doesn't find them comes to mind, is it bad idea?

Lets ignore the question whether killing the people at the party wrong and concentrate on the following:

Do you really want to explain this strategy to a potential future co-worker? I doubt whether the most aggressive Wall Street firms wants a sociopath on the payroll.

[helene_t]

Funny, I recall Google was chosen as the most attractive US employer by some fancy magazine a couple of years ago. Maybe that position has made them arrogant.

[hrothgar]

helene_t, on Sep 21 2007, 03:52 PM, said:

Funny, I recall Google was chosen as the most attractive US employer by some fancy magazine a couple of years ago. Maybe that position has made them arrogant.

I've heard that the place is a nightmare:

1. The Google IPO happened years ago. If you join today, you're never going to make the big bucks

2. A lot of folks working at Google are stupid rich. They've made ridiculous amounts of money and don't ever need to worry about working again. (This can present some ugly management problems)

3. The company is doing lots of M+A (and not necessarily in a good way). 9 years back, when the internet bubble was in full bloom, there were an enormous number of companies with no long term strategy other than a pump and dump IPO. Those times seem to be back, only the target for all these profit free business models is a Google acquisition.

Don't get me wrong. I love google as a search engine and I really like my gmail account. I think that they revolutionized my mailbox. However, I'd never invest money in this company, nor would I chose to work there.

[david_c]

Fluffy, on Sep 21 2007, 09:23 AM, said:

17. You have five pirates, ranked from 5 to 1 in descending order. The top pirate has the right to propose how 100 gold coins should be divided among them. But the others get to vote on his plan, and if fewer than half agree with him, he gets killed. How should he allocate the gold in order to maximize his share but live to enjoy it? (Hint: One pirate ends up with 98 percent of the gold.)kes to work for Google?

Dammit I get 97. Can someone explain what I've done wrong here:

with three remaining: -, -, 100, 0, 0
with four remaining: -, 98, 0, 1, 1
with five remaining: 97, 0, 1, 2, 0 or 97, 0, 1, 0, 2.

[MickyB]

Don't you need to start with only two remaining?

And when it refers to a vote, it means 50% plus *including the head pirate*

[david_c]

MickyB, on Sep 21 2007, 02:07 PM, said:

And when it refers to a vote, it means 50% plus *including the head pirate*

Maybe that's the problem. I'd get 98 if that was true. But that's not what it says: it says the "others" get to vote.

So with two remaining there is no plan which gets accepted. That's why I didn't start with it.