Apparently, these are some of the questions you'd have to answer at a google job interview.

1. How many golf balls can you 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.)

Would be interesting to see what some "good" answers would be.

so what are the answers?

just google all the answers.

Google probably haxed the search results so you cant cheat by googling the answers.
17 I reckon pirate 1 gets 98 gold, 2 gets 1 and 3 gets 1. Pirates 4 and 5 get to walk the treadmill.

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?

Wonder what an ideal response to this one is. Logic obviously says no... but whats the trick to this question? Are you supposed to say something lame like "tell the others to say that their birthday is on the same day as yours".

Well no, if 5 people share your birthday, you get $5 and he gets $6.
So you need 6 people out of 8 to share your birthday, thats s*** odds.

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?

Simone kills Shane.

do they all die? i hope so

married couple one is very beautiful

you can reason it out this way

with two couples:

initially the wives think: one man has cheated and i know one man who has cheated who isn't my husband so i won't kill my husband.

the next day they wake up and no husbands have been killed. so they think: if one woman saw no cheaters she would have killed her husband.

so both women kill their husbands.

with three couples:

initially the wives think. one man has cheated and i know two men who are not my husband who have cheated so i won't kill my husband.

the next day they wake up and no husbands have been killed. so they think: if one woman saw no cheaters she would have killed her husband. so all the other women can see at least one cheater and so there is at least two cheaters.

the next day they wake up and no husbands have been killed. so they think: if one woman saw one cheater she would have killed her husband. so all the other women can see at least two cheaters.

so they kill all the husbands.

and so forth...

I honestly thought the party/birthday one was easy;

If you ask the other 8 people before he does, you're the one finding that they don't have the same bday, not him, so he doesn't get the money for them.

works with my logic anyway hehe.

For Flash Light Bridge.

2min and 1min over. _ _ _ _ 2min total.
1min back. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 3min total.
10min and 5min over. _ _ _ _ 13min total.
2min back _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 15min total.
2min and 1min over _ _ _ _ _ 17min total.

Win.

f***ed if I know the rest though.
I use to know the 7 Balls 1 heaver one, but forgot the answer :/

Yahoo the answers.

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

orly?

Parkour is an activity of French origin, the aim of which is to move from point A to point B as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body

l2parkournoobs.

too hard basket

16.

put three balls on each side of the balance, and leave two aside

if they weighed the same, then one of the two left aside must be the heavier ball; put one of them on each side of the balance; done

if they weighed differently, take the heavier three, put one on each side of the balance and leave one aside. if they weigh the same, the heavier ball is the one left aside, done

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

go to the pub and get s***faced, f*** point A and B

Damn i'm bored. but here we go!
6. How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?

Second hand over min & hour hands:-
2 at start + 60secs/min x 60mins/hr x 24hrs x 2hands
= 86,402 times

Minute hand over hour hand:-
1 at start + 24hrs x 1 hand
= 25 times

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

google map it

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?

Sit right in the middle of the blades and hold on...

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

$10 per window, pay a bunch of other people $5 per window.. Profit.

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?

Make all the shirts the same.

10.

2 boys to 1 Girl ?


I'd be thinking that since Google is all about creating new and different approaches to things, the answers they are looking for would be as creative, yet logical as possible.

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.)

Top pirate gets 98, gives the two lowest ranked people 1 each? wtf?

Geez computer nerds are boring people.

haha yeah the answer to allll of those questions is definitely well I'm not sure but the easiest way to get the answer is to google it.

Haha that pirate one is basic game theory which Bah hit on the head.

Haha that pirate one is basic game theory which Bah hit on the head.

Why? If I was one of the pirates who got 1 gold, I'd vote to kill the f***er.

throw 2 peices of gold over the edge and watch them all jump after it.

Uh yeah if I was pirate number 2 or 3 I would disagree about the deal... it is unfair. I worked real f***en hard only to be screwed out of my fair share? Pirate 1 dies.

wasn't it always equal share with pirates, except for the captain who got 2 shares?

I would promise to pay off two of the pirates, if they got rid of the other two, and then when they'd done that, I'd kill the two that I promised to pay off, keep all the gold for myself, and hire a new crew at the next port.

Pirates don't exist, therefore I get 100 gold.

oooh who studies game theory where now?

Top pirate gets 98, gives the two lowest ranked people 1 each? wtf?

top pirates gets 98 and two others get 1 gold.

the ones that get the gold have this choice:

accept: +1 gold
refuse: nothing

clearly it is the better option to accept. if the game was iterative or if there was a way for the pirates to bargain the outcome would be different.

of course in reality the pirates wouldn't be completely rational and their bargaining instinct would make them refuse the offer.

for what happens in a proper situation: An-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization

last edited by hast at 19:52:36 25/Sep/07

i didnt refuse ur mum last night

hast: you're a game theorist/economist/student of one of the two?

no. i just remember reading an article on how humans have a hardwired bargaining strategy that is not rational in some situations and the pirate scenario was basically the same situation (though the pirates are meant to act rational). here is the concept: Ultimatum Game

last edited by hast at 22:08:02 25/Sep/07

top pirates gets 98 and two others get 1 gold.

the ones that get the gold have this choice:

accept: +1 gold
refuse: nothing

accept: +1 gold
refuse: kill the main pirate and share amongst survivors: +25 gold

accept: +1 gold
refuse: kill the main pirate and share amongst survivors: +25 gold

if you assume the game goes on if the first pirate is killed and so forth the result is much more interesting. which might be what they were getting at because they said rank... mmmm

if the top pirate doesn't get the vote you get a distribution like 97/0/1/2

two left: the voting pirate will always decline and the top pirate will die => top always dies, bottom gets 100 coins
three left: the bottom pirate will always decline (he wants it all), the second bottom will always accept (he doesn't want to be two left and die) => top can choose 100 coins
four left: the bottom pirate will accept if > 0 (he wants more than zero), the second bottom will accept if > 0 (he wants more than zero),
the third bottom will always refuse (he wants it all) :: (top pirate chooses 98/0/1/1)
five left: the bottom pirate will accept if > 1 (he wants more than one), the second bottom will always accept if > 1 (he wants more than one), the third bottom will always accept if > 0 (he wants more than zero), the fourth bottom will always refuse (he wants 98) => 97/0/1/2/0

if everyone votes you will get 98/0/1/1/0


last edited by hast at 21:14:17 25/Sep/07

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!)

7.5 degrees?

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

simple. for as much as I can convince people to pay for it.

7.5 degrees?

Correct.

7.5 degrees? why?

9. Every man in a village of 100 married couples...

Assuming the women are all reasonable logicians, on the hundredth day all of the men will be killed. Then ferried off the island by a blue eyed silent monk with a spot on his head.