Google employment quiz

[diceisgod]

I'll take a crack:

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

If by school bus you mean not a retard/short bus, the answer is approx twice the number that can fit in a short 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?

Stear clear of the blades and pray that after whatever is left of your 60 secs you are in a safe position

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

Total time X Rates (both in ref to the labor per the local union's contract)

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

Not sure what a stack is but I doubt memory "grows" in any direction up, down or otherwise so the answer is you can't

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

A database is a collection of information. A smart database relates certain information or data which have obvious and unique associations with one another. Now write that down and study until you understand or I'll kill you.

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

Infinitely many times since every hand sweeps an entire 360 degrees - every point around the clock the three hands will at some point be overlapping

7. You have to get from point A to point B. You don’t know if you can get there. What would you do?
Women; ask for directions
Men: drive til they find or are reported missing by their family.

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?
Throw them out and buy all identical shirts like Jeff Goldblum's character in the Fly.

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?

Kill the queen, now no husbands have commited adultery as far as they know because they say so.

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?

This a trick question because the country in question is obviously 3rd world having such a barbaric practice. They are not people, and the terms "boys/girls" do not apply to animals. The answer by default is 0:0, undefined.

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)?

I believe you multiple the probs? It's been a while since quantum physics so I'll say .95x.95

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!)

This is a relativistic problem, actually it involves the speed of light. I don't feel like doing math but I'll give the jist. The angle will be related to your distance form the clock and time it takes light to travel from it. That flash of an instant when you actually see that it's 3:15, the real time is that flash of an instant later. Any way it's safe to say the angle is very very small, the first digit probably doesn't occur until about 100's or even many 1000's or more place to the right of the decimal point.

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?

The 5 min guy carries the 1 min guy across - Total time elasped: 5 min
5 min goes back across: TTE: 10
5 min guy carries 10 min guy across: TTE: 15 min
5 min guy throws flashlight across the way to 2 min guy who then crosses: TTE 17 min

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?

Assuming the wager is not limited to the 10 people but to all worldwide, then you would be an idiot to take it assuming roughly that there are an equal number of people with birthdays for each day of the calendar year.


15. How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?
Zero or much, much less then the number on the entire world's surface

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?

If the two weights are equal, place one on each side of the balance and by trial and error add one ball on each side until you got them. If the weights aren't equal (or even if they are), skip the first step off the previous solution and then proceed.


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.)

Assuming priates can kill at will, being pirates, I say #5 pays #4 and #3 one gold piece each to vote for his plan and then kill #2 and #1 after the vote. Then #5 kills #4 and #3 and keeps his 98 pieces.