Some of these are "market sizing" questions where the accuracy of the answer isn't important, but it's the logical method you go through to answer them that is important. These are all in person, and saying "I'd Google it" isn't a proper answer.
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'll take a crack:
Quote: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.
Actually I just noticed I misunderstood #16 - uh..no idea what do in that case.
i think alot of them are in this book i have
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Would-Move-Mount-Microsofts-Puzzle/dp/0316919160">http://www.amazon.com/Would-Move-Mount- ... 0316919160</a><!-- m -->
but just as i'm to lazy to solve them, i'm to lazy to look some of them up
i sort of remember the piano tuners one though. something about figuring out how many there are in the phone book in one area, then finding the population of that area and then multiplying through. there were some other steps too
you prob should have posted like one a day or something so the three people left can argue about the answer on a certain one then move on.
and number 10 is ~1:1, but i think it leans more in the male favor. so maybe 55-45
#16
you split them up in groups in two groups of three, with one left over
you weigh the groups of three.
if they are equal the one left over is different.
if one side is heavier, you take that heavier side and split them up 1 - 1 - 1
you weigh two of them against each other like you did with the groups of three.
if they are equal the one you didn't weigh is heavier. if one is heavier, there ya go.
3. How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?
this is most likely not the google question, unless they're looking for an answer that
1 - makes fun of microsoft
2 - makes fun of the weather
The answer to question #3 is
Estimate the number of windows in Seattle (boring and complex. Number of people. windows per person at home; at work; in cars, blah blah, blah)
Estimate the time it would take you to wash each window (maybe changing for those inside, and those outside on various stories).
Estimate the number of windows a person could in an 8 hour day
Multiply by an hourly rate (say $20)
But those market sizing questions are much more detailed and boring than, the mind benders.
Question #1 is a market sizing question. Boring. Figure out the volume of a school bus. Figure out the volume of a golf ball. Math
Question #2 I don't get. Maybe duck? If I'm the size of a nickel, I can easily hide under the blades. But will the blades eventually stop or are they just going to go forever? Maybe climb out from the measurement ticks? I wouldn't be surprised if this is some math problem where you can be more powerful if you shrink but have the same density. It seems to be a strange fact to throw out there unless it's crucial to the answer.
Question #3. Already addressed
Question #4. Don't get it.
Question #5. Don't get it.
Question #6. I like DIG's answer. That's probably the right answer, because the immediate response of "once per hour" is too easy to actually be correct.
Question #7. I don't really know what they are trying to get at here. I assume "get the address, and google it" isn't the correct answer.
Question #8: By occasion. Sub by the most logical breakdown for you (e.g. pattern, color, collard/not collared, etc). For me, it would be color since I wear suits a lot and need to coordinate my colors. I don't know what kind of detail they are looking for.
Question #9: This one is odd. This shouldn't be news to the other women. They should already know that everyone cheats (at least everyone except their husband). If we assume that the women communicate, they would even know that their own husbands cheat. I'm sure I'm getting it wrong.
Question #10. I'm sure my math is wrong, but no matter if people stop at girls or boys, it still doesn't change the fact that 50% of children are boys and 50% are women, so it should still be 50-50, no?
Question #11. If you have a constant default probability, that should mean that you have a 95% chance of seeing a car at any point in time, so it should remain at 95%. If there is a constant rate of traffic so that 95% of the time, you'll see a car within 30 minutes, then it would be 1/3 of 95%. I think the first way is more righter.
Question #12
The hour hand will be 1/4 of the way between 3 and 4. Each hour (1/12th) is 30 degrees. 1/4 of 30 is 7.5 minutes
Question #13
Wow, DIG's method is devoid of logic. If you are going to have people carry others. Why not have the 1 minute guy carry the 10 minute guy and take 1 minute. Someone would be slower if they had to carry someone else. The exact 17 minutes is
Send 1 & 2 - 2 minutes
send 1 back - 3 minutes
send 10 & 5 - 13 minutes
send 2 back - 15 minutes
send 1 & 2 - 17 minutes
Question #14 - This seems like a retarded question. Unless everyone there is there because they share the same birthday.
Question #15 - another market sizing question. Don't care
Question #16 - Hedcold got it.
Question #17 - I think DIG got it.
i think for #2 you stand (sit?) on the middle of the blade, because its like the eye of the storm.
#4 is obviously a programming question, i forget how to answer that one. pretty sure it was in the book.
#8 is just another database type question, prob want to see how your mind works when it comes to organizing data
#10 during an interview i would say 50/50, and i was probably over thinking it on the 55% male part.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=71">http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=71</a><!-- m -->
yea i think the ducking part is "right", not what i said earlier. whoops
#2 why wouldn't you just hold onto the blade while it's spinning.
Paper Boy Wrote:#2 why wouldn't you just hold onto the blade while it's spinning.
You would be batter, because it would be like trying to hold onto a helicopter blade.
1. How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?
A lot.
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?
Is this a common occurrence? Do I need to be concerned about being shrunk if I accept this job? Will Wayne Szalinski be my immediate supervisor? But to answer the question – I’d sit and wait impatiently to die, counting the seconds until I no longer have to live in a world where I am expected to answer such asinine questions.
3. How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?
Significantly more than this job pays.
4. How would you find out if a machine’s stack grows up or down in memory?
I would quantify the equilibrium of said machine by psychoanalyzing the virtues of both memory stacks against one another, in a quasi-controlled chemically retroactive chasm environment, of course. Then to measure the precise size of growth, I would refuckulate the catapulters at 0800 hours so as to not recapitulate the wonton soup. Finally, in order to measure the machine’s memory quotient, I would need to synthesize the corollary which is closest to being perpendicular to the cosine of the nearest whole number, in this case 39. It is pivotal to not oversimplify the altitude of the machine by using a number such as the tangent, as this would create what I like to call a pseudo-dimensional influx, a scenario which I’m sure you would like to avoid at all costs.
5. Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.
I don’t have an eight-year-old nephew, therefore this question is null.
6. How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?
How many times a day do you ask stupid, meaningless questions? Yes, that was a rhetorical question. The correct answer is 22.
7. You have to get from point A to point B. You don’t know if you can get there. What would you do?
If I were driving, I’d point my web browser to a largely unknown, up and coming website called mapquest.com. You might have heard of them. I would then jointly use my peripheral devices – namely my keyboard and mouse - to type in the starting address (point A) and the ending address (point B) in the appropriate fields. I would then click on the “get directions” link and proceed to print out the directions to the printer that is attached via a USB cable to my desktop computer. I would then take this 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper with me into the car and follow the directions it printed out. If I were walking, I would just walk into oncoming traffic to avoid having to answer such ridiculous, obvious, pompous, inane questions.
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 can organize them by color, by frequency of use, chronological by purchase date, or I can tell you some other convoluted thing that you are looking to hear. Or I can simply keep them unorganized and sacrifice the whole extra minute of my life it would take to find your stupid collared polo alligator geeky fucking shirt. Shit! That extra minute might make me late for work though, and I would hate to be late to work at Google, where the penalty is death by shrinking and being tossed into a blender.
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’m sorry, but is this an IQ test or a job interview? Is this some sort of subliminal way of telling me not to seek other employment, for fear of “the queen” (read: “Google”) killing me for my unfaithfulness to the company?
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?
Is this another condition of employment? Are all women hired by Google mandated to give birth only to boys? How many girls are they allowed to give birth to before the queen intervenes, shrinks them and their whore daughters and throws them all in a blender?
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)?
If you are on a train travelling 55 mph from California, and Joe Morgan is on a train travelling 75 mph from Cincinnati, who will ask more stupid questions (assuming a constant probability of stupidity)?
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!)
If I look at a clock and the time is 3:15 (pm), the only thing that means to me is that I am 105 minutes away from leaving work and driving home, when I am hopefully involved in a fatal car accident which will ensure I’ll never again have to waste my time answering such meaningless, irrelevant, holier than thou bullshit questions.
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?
I don’t fucking know. Who fucking cares? Unless I am interviewing for the position of Google Boy Scout Leader, which I’m pretty sure I’m not, how is answering this question going to tell you anything meaningful about my ability to perform my DESK job, which will be performed in an OFFICE, without bridges and ropes and camp sites and rickets and goddamn slow pokes getting in my way. Get fucked!
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?
Allow me to answer this with a question of my own. Come up with the answer in 30 seconds, or die. As I was going to St. Ives I met a man with seven wives. And every wife had seven sacks, every sack had seven cats, every cat had seven kits, kits, cats, sacks, wives. How many were going to St. Ives?
15. How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?
How the fuck should I know? Who fucking cares? Why is it my problem if you need your piano tuned? Figure it out for yourself, you lazy cunt. Who the fuck owns a piano, anyway? What a loser. SUCK YOURSELF!
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?
First I’d need to get into the proper mindset and prepare myself for taking an IQ test. Then I’d be sure to show up to the test location and NOT A JOB INTERVIEW. Because were I to show up to a job interview, my frame of mind would be completely different. See, I’d be more focused on answering questions relating to the job – i.e. how many years experience do you have cleaning toilets, what is the proper way of cleaning a urinal filled with poop, how would you handle a toilet filled with menstrual blood, what is the proper way to hold a plunger, etc. Whereas if I showed up for an IQ test, I’d be more focused on answering the types of questions you’ve asked and less focused on what to do when a fat bitch leaves her wallet in the bathroom.
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.)
Yeah, yeah. I get the subliminal bullshit already. Just kill me. Kill me now since I don’t agree with your “plan”. This entire bullshit interview process and your entire “unique” “think outside of the box” approach is completely full of shit. You think you’re being all different and clever and that you’re a one of a kind, state of the art company, but you’re not. You’re all just a bunch of dicks. No better, no worse than any other shitty company out there. All job interviews suck, period. It’s all about deciphering what the interviewer/company wants to hear and then kissing their ass with the same old regurgitated answers that you’ve given on all your other job interviews and that they’ve heard from all their other interviewees. It is such an absurd, antiquated, awful, tedious, aggravating, mind-numbing experience. But at least the other shitty companies ask you answerable, sometimes even relevant, questions and not these convoluted fucked up riddles and brain teasers. Who the fuck do you think you are?
Do you still think you have what it takes to work for Google?
What kind of a self-aggrandizing asshole would ever want to work for such a self-aggrandizing company? Gmail and Google Documents are still very nice products though, and I will continue to use them despite my newfound disgust towards your employment procedures. Now, don’t you have some memory stacks to shrink or something?
diceisgod Wrote:Paper Boy Wrote:#2 why wouldn't you just hold onto the blade while it's spinning.
You would be batter, because it would be like trying to hold onto a helicopter blade.
Yeah ... STUPID! I bet if you answered the question like that on the interview, they'd laugh in your face. Then they'd call in all their memory stacking friends and force you to repeat your answer so they can all share a hearty laugh at your expense.
Mr. Anus, you had better start taking these things a little more seriously and put away the sarcasm scarf.
to BA's whiny rant of "waaaaah! This is a job interview, not an IQ Test!!!! Waaaaaah, not fair@!!!!!"
People lie in job interviews all the time. You can't lie in an interview that tests your creative thinking, problem solving, and logic.
That's why these types of questions are the norm in consulting companies. It's not super common that regular companies like Google also do these, but I had to study all these types of questions (more the market sizing questions like "how many piano tuners are there in the world" or "how many traffic lights are there in Manhattan", but the IQ tests would be cool.
And aparently the answer for the blender question is that you just stand on the top of the blade and you would float out. It's got something to do with your density being the same, so you'd be as heavy as a piece of paper, and you'd just float right out.
I knew the density thing must have been relevant somehow. I was tied up for a while thinking about volume (m/d) and maybe that you would just break the thing anyway or something stupid like.
Also, the marketing estimation questions remind me a lot of the type of questions we had in astronomy, ridiculously involved questions like how many atoms are in your current breathe that were once exhaled by Julius Ceasar when he said et brute and then right died dead. The answer I think is 8 or so but anyway people that ask and do problems like that regularly must not know about jerking off or something.