Kenneth Dreyer

When browsing trought my RSS feeds I came across a very interesting post. Ariel from Today Is Not Over Yet posted a post including some questions you might be asked in an interview when applying for a job in Google.

For most of the questions in the post, my answer would start with something like “That depends on <fill in some unrelevant garbage>”. Really, how smart are you suppose to be to answer these questions in a good way?

1. How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?
   That depends on the size of the bus, of course.
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?
   Maybe I could escape out of the taper? I would be so dead.
3. How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?
   I would charge by the hour, or per window.
4. How would you find out if a machine’s stack grows up or down in memory?
   huh?
   
5. Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.
   A database is a little neat thing we use to store information in, normally behind the website or program, so you’ll never see it kid. The database can be used to various cool things, and some of them even have their own language to communicate with them. Impressed, kiddo?
6. How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?
   Depends on how many hands the clock have. If two, I guess it overlaps 23 times (since the 24th one goes into a new day).
7. You have to get from point A to point B. You don’t know if you can get there. What would you do?
   Call a cab or use my brand new navigation system.
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?
   Categorize them by when I wear them. Casual, party, work etc.
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?
   I guess that since no one of the wifes has any proves, nothing 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?
    Next question please.
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)?
    Oh please, I’ve been doing this for many years now, and I’ve allready forgot it. Geez.
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!)
    Oh, that zero. Or maybe it’s 360?
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?
    No mather how many time I try, I just end up with two minutes with walking in the dark
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?
    No.
15. How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?
    I have no idea.
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?
    I give up.
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.)
    Don’t know, so I would advice him to take the money and run. Pirates aren’t that smart.

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