Googleusedto ask job applicantsridiculously hard brain - teaser consultation inquiry .
of late , we posted 15 of these questions to show just how heavily they were .
Now , we ’ve get the answers .
How many golf balls can correspond in a schooltime motorbus ?
Job : Product Manager
Answer : This is one of those question Google asks just to see if the applier can explicate the key challenge to lick the job .
Reader Matt Beuchamp come up with a dandy solvent , writing :
I figure a standard schooling bus is about 8 foot wide by 6 ft high-pitched by 20 feet long - this is just a speculation based on the yard of 60 minutes I have been trapped behind schooltime buses while dealings in all directions is stopped .
That means 960 three-dimensional foot and since there are 1728 cubic inches in acubitfoot , that means about 1.6 million cubic inches .
I direct the mass of a golf ball to be about 2.5 cubic inches ( 4/3 * shamus * .85 ) as .85 inches is the radius of a golf game ball .
Divide that 2.5 three-dimensional inches into 1.6 million and you come up with 660,000 golf ball . However , since there are seats and shit in there taking up space and also since the spherical shape of a golf orchis mean there will be considerable empty distance between them when stack , I ’ll round down to 500,000 golf game balls .
Which sounds ridiculous . I would have spitting - ball no more than 100k . But I stomach by my math .
Of of course , if we are utter about the kind of bus that George Bush cash in one’s chips to school on or Barney Frank rides to work every day , it would be half that … or 250,000 golf game musket ball .
How much should you appoint to wash all the window in Seattle ?
Answer : This is one of those questions where the put-on is to come up with an easy answer than the one that ’s seemingly being called for . We ’d say . " $ 10 per windowpane . "
In a state in which people only need boys …
… every family continues to have children until they have a boy . If they have a little girl , they have another child . If they have a male child , they turn back . What is the proportion of boys to girl in the land ?
serve : This one caused quite the argumentation , but we figured it out take these steps :
How many piano radio are there in the intact world ?
Answer : We ’d answer " However many the mart dictates . If pianos need tune once a workweek , and it takes an minute to tune a piano and a piano radio works 8 hours a day for 5 day a week 40 pianos call for tuning each week . We ’d answer one for every 40 pianos . "
The classic Fermi problem , loosely attributed to Fermi , [ 2 ] is " How manypiano tunersare there inChicago ? " A typical resolution to this problem would imply multiplying together a series of idea that would bear the correct resolution if the estimates were correct . For example , we might make the next assumption :
6 . Each pianissimo radio set ferment eight hour in a day , five Day in a calendar week , and 50 week in a year .
From these assumptions we can cipher that the number of pianissimo tunings in a single yr in Chicago is :
( 5,000,000 persons in Chicago ) / ( 2 person / household ) × ( 1 piano/20 household ) × ( 1 piano tuning per pianissimo per twelvemonth ) = 125,000 piano tunings per class in Chicago .
And we can similarly calculate that the ordinary piano tuner do :
( 50 weeks / year)×(5 days / week)×(8 hour / day)×(1 pianissimo tuning per 2 hours per pianoforte tuner ) = 1000 forte-piano tunings per twelvemonth per forte-piano tuner .
Dividing give :
( 125,000 pianoforte tuning per year in Chicago ) / ( 1000 pianoforte tunings per yr per forte-piano receiving set ) = 125 pianoforte tuner in Chicago .
A famous example of a Fermi - job - comparable estimate is theDrake equation , which seeks to estimate the turn of intelligent civilizations in the coltsfoot . The canonic question of why , if there are a significant figure of such civilizations , ours has never encountered any others is call theFermi paradox .
Why are manhole covers around ?
Job : Software Engineer
Answer : So it does n’t return through the manhole ( when the plane , ordinarily flush with the planer of the street , goes vertical to the street ) .
Design an excretion plan for San Francisco
Answer : Again , this one is all about the interviewer seeing how the interviewee would assail the job . We ’d start our answer by ask , " What sort of catastrophe are we design for ? "
How many time a day do a clock ’s hand overlap ?
Answer : 22 metre . From WikiAnswers :
AM12:001:052:113:164:225:276:337:388:449:4910:55
PM12:001:052:113:164:225:276:337:388:449:4910:55
Explain the significance of " deadened beef "
Our ( wrong ) answer : Beef is always dead . Calling something " beat beef cattle " is superfluous — a no - no for coders .
The actual answer , from a proofreader :
DEADBEEF is a hex value that was used in debug back in the mainframe computer / fabrication days because it was gentle to see when mark and recover specific storage in pages of jinx dumps . Most computer science graduates have seen this at least in their assembly language course in college and that ’s why they ask software program railroad engineer to make love it . Fromwikipedia :
" 0xDEADBEEF ( " dead gripe " ) is used by IBM RS/6000 organization , Mac OS on 32 - bit PowerPC processors and the Commodore Amiga as a magic debug note value . On Sun Microsystems ' Solaris , it marks freed kernel retentiveness . On OpenVMS running on Alpha processors , DEAD_BEEF can be seen by press CTRL - T.[3 ] "
A man pushed his railway car to a hotel and lose his circumstances . What happened ?
Answer : He land on Boardwalk . ( Painful , right ? )
You ask to mark that your acquaintance Bob has your correct sound number …
… but you may not ask him directly . You must write the query on a notice and give it to Eve who will take the card to Bob and return the response to you . What must you pen on the lineup , besides the question , to assure Bob can encode the message so that Eve can not read your headphone number ?
Job : Software Engineer
Answer : Since you are just " discipline , " you ask him to call you at a sure time . If he does n’t , he does n’t have your numeral .
Too simple ? A lector suggested : " In that compositor’s case you need a check - sum . Have Bob add all the figure of your earpiece number together , write down the total , and transcend that back to you . "
You ’re the captain of a pirate ship …
… and your crew gets to vote on how the gold is divided up . If fewer than one-half of the pirates agree with you , you die . How do you recommend apportion the gold in such a way that you get a practiced share of the pillage but still survive ?
Job : Engineering Manager
Answer : You separate the booty equally between the top 51 % of the crew .
You have eight ball all of the same size of it …
Seven of them count the same , and one of them weighs slimly more . How can you find the ball that is profound by using a balance and only two advisement ?
Answer : Reader Hyloka nailed this one first :
Take 6 of the 8 balls and put 3 on each side of the scurf . If the heavy ball is n’t in the group of 6 , you know it ’s one of the rest 2 and so you put those two in the scale and determine which one . If the heavy ball is in the 6 , you have narrowed it down to 3 . Of those 3 , foot any 2 and put them on the scale . If the heavy ball is in that group of 2 , you cognise which one it is . If both formal are of adequate weighting , then the big nut is the one you sat to the side .
You are devote some eggs …
You have access to a 100 - account building . ballock can be very voiceless or very fragile , mean they may break if dropped from the first floor or may not even break if drop off from centesimal floor . Both eggs are very in appearance . You need to figure out the mellow floor of a 100 - floor edifice an egg can be dropped without breaking . The interrogative sentence is , how many drop you need to make ? You are allow to break two eggs .
suffice : The maximal ball drops for this method acting is 14 times .
or else of partitioning the floors by 10 , start at the 14th floor , and then go up 13 floor , then 12 , then 11 , then 10 , 9 , 8 , 7 , 6 , 5 , 4 until you get to the 99th trading floor , then here . If the ballock were to break at the 100th floor , it would take 12 drops ( or 11 if you take for granted that it would break at the 100th floor ) . Say , for deterrent example , that the forty-ninth trading floor was the high floor , the issue of drops would be the 14th , twenty-seventh , 39th , 50th ( the egg would better on the 50th flooring ) , plus the 40 , 41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48 , and forty-ninth floor for a total of 14 drops .
Explain a database in three sentences to your 8 - year - old nephew .
reply : The point here is to essay the applicant ’s power to convey complex ideas in simple language . Here ’s our effort : " A database is a machine that call back lots of information about lots of thing . People use them to help remember that information . Go play outside . "
You are wince to the altitude of a nickel …
And your mass is proportionately reduced to maintain your original denseness . You are then thrown into an empty methamphetamine hydrochloride liquidiser . The blades will start moving in 60 seconds . What do you do ?
Answer : This one is all about the judgment interviewee ’s creativity . We ’d seek to break the galvanising motor .
