http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/top-oddball-interview-questions-2009

A lot of them seem like genuinely useful questions to ask candidates, one of 
our lecturers at University would regularly ask us questions like #7, 11 or 
19 - it's interesting to see what assumptions and reasoning people make to 
get an estimate.

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scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/top-oddball-interview-questions-2009

  Question 5 doesn't make any sense:

"If two cars are traveling in a two lap race on a track of any length,
one going 60 mph and the other going 30mph, how fast will the slower
car have to go to finish at the same car to finish at the same time?"

  I have hard time parsing that question.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>  Question 5 doesn't make any sense:
>
> "If two cars are traveling in a two lap race on a track of any length,
> one going 60 mph and the other going 30mph, how fast will the slower
> car have to go to finish at the same car to finish at the same time?"
>
>  I have hard time parsing that question.

Looks to me like a messed up copy/cut&paste that went unnoticed.  Although I 
can't really imagine what the real question wanted without adding a lot more 
words in there.

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Warp wrote:

>   Question 5 doesn't make any sense.
> 
>   I have hard time parsing that question.

Of course, the stupid thing is that with questions like that, maybe 
that's the challenge. To try to figure out what the actual question is. 
Maybe they made it nonsensicle on purpose to see how people would react. 
Retarded but true...

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Warp wrote:

> >   Question 5 doesn't make any sense.
> > 
> >   I have hard time parsing that question.

> Of course, the stupid thing is that with questions like that, maybe 
> that's the challenge. To try to figure out what the actual question is. 
> Maybe they made it nonsensicle on purpose to see how people would react. 
> Retarded but true...

  There was an article somewhere on the subject of why "clever" questions
which expect "clever" answers are actually counterproductive.

  A typical "clever" question is like "how would you weigh a Boeing 747?",
and it's expected that you come up with some convoluted solution to the
problem, while pragmatic answers like "I would consult the specification
manual" or "I would ask an engineer" are discarded.

  However, from a practical point of view those pragmatic answers are
much, much better than any convoluted answer you could come up with.
Why? Because if you come up with a convoluted answer it shows that you
tend to come up with convoluted solutions to simple problems, rather than
doing the practical thing and just consult a manual or other source which
*already* knows the answer, which would be the best thing to do in a
practical situation in the job.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:

>   There was an article somewhere on the subject of why "clever" questions
> which expect "clever" answers are actually counterproductive.
> 
>   A typical "clever" question is like "how would you weigh a Boeing 747?",
> and it's expected that you come up with some convoluted solution to the
> problem, while pragmatic answers like "I would consult the specification
> manual" or "I would ask an engineer" are discarded.

That would, indeed, be a rather stupid question.

>   However, from a practical point of view those pragmatic answers are
> much, much better than any convoluted answer you could come up with.
> Why? Because if you come up with a convoluted answer it shows that you
> tend to come up with convoluted solutions to simple problems, rather than
> doing the practical thing and just consult a manual or other source which
> *already* knows the answer, which would be the best thing to do in a
> practical situation in the job.

Some people evidently feel that doing things the hard way makes them 
look somehow "superior".



Tangentally related: Some scientists used genetic algorithms to try to 
"evolve" a simple electronic oscilator. Like, they hooked a computer up 
to some kind of programmable IC, set it off with randomly initialised 
ICs, and let it mutate and cross the wiring sequences and apply a 
fitness function - you know, the whole genetic algorithms thing.

Eventually they came up with a device which did indeed produce the 
desired sinewave. But the engineers looked at the wiring diagram and it 
looked absolutely nothing like an oscilator. In fact, they couldn't 
figure out how the hell it works. (This is apparently not uncommon with 
genetic algorithms.)

More surprisingly, they tried to do a demo for somebody else and 
discovered that the device no longer worked. The rather puzzled 
experimenters did some experiments, and eventually discovered that the 
device only actually works in the room where they originally evolved it.

At this point, they figured out how the device actually works. It isn't 
an oscilator, it's a radio receiver. And it was receiving interferrence 
from one of the other items of kit in the lab. This simultaneously 
explains why the circuit looks nothing like an oscilator (i.e., IT 
ISN'T), and why it stopped working outside the lab.

It also demonstrates that genetic algorithms will solve a given problem 
by any and all means possible, not necessarily the one you were 
expecting. If you say "generate this signal please", it will generate 
that signal - even if that means receiving it as radio waves!

I'm sure biological evolution is prevaded by similarly counter-intuitive 
adaptations...

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Warp wrote:
>   I have hard time parsing that question.

It *is* messed up. The usual question is something like

You have a race two miles long. For the first mile, one car goes 60MPH and 
the other goes 30MPH. How fast does the other car have to go to finish the 
race at the same time as the one going 60MPH?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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Invisible wrote:
> At this point, they figured out how the device actually works. It isn't 
> an oscilator, it's a radio receiver. 

Interesting. I read about that, or something similar, where the device had a 
block of four or five transitors wired together but not connected to 
anything else. When they removed the transistors, it stopped working.

I wonder if it's the same device.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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scott wrote:
> people make to get an estimate.

Of course, the other question is how much time and money you can spend 
getting the estimate, and how accurate the estimate needs to be. Few of 
these questions can be answered without that information.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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"scott" <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote in message news:4b56b729@news.povray.org...
> http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/top-oddball-interview-questions-2009
>
> A lot of them seem like genuinely useful questions to ask candidates, one 
> of our lecturers at University would regularly ask us questions like #7, 
> 11 or 19 - it's interesting to see what assumptions and reasoning people 
> make to get an estimate.

That's really cool, I like it.

I've got a quiz I made that I run candidates (for programming jobs) through 
now, and the first one I put on there is "How does an e-mail system work? 
What happend from the time one person hits 'Send' and the other person sees 
a message in the In-Box?" I get the most amazing amount of hemming and 
hawing over that one.

--
Jack

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