Questions by Google


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 many piano tuners are there in the entire world?

4. 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?

5. Describe a chicken using a programming language.


Questions by Microsoft

1. You have a bucket of jelly beans. Some are red, some are blue, and some green. With your eyes closed, pick out 2 of a like color. How many do you have to grab to be sure you have 2 of the same?

2. Pairs of primes separated by a single number are called prime pairs. Examples are 17 and 19. Prove that the number between a prime pair is always divisible by 6 (assuming both numbers in the pair are greater than 6). Now prove that there are no ‘prime triples.’

3. Imagine an analog clock set to 12 o’clock. Note that the hour and minute hands overlap. How many times each day do both the hour and minute hands overlap? How would you determine the exact times of the day that this occurs?

4. How much does a 747 weigh?

5. Imagine a disk spinning like a record player turn table. Half of the disk is black and the other is white. Assume you have an unlimited number of color sensors. How many sensors would you have to place around the disk to determine the direction the disk is spinning? Where would they be placed?

Taken from here:
http://royal.pingdom.com/?p=338

About 3:1 - or slightly less boys, because the answer implies that the families stop after the first boy while if they have several girls in a row, they would have to continue.

The other look like fun, but I have to go working

Obviously I won't end up working for either of those companies. Me and math do not get along.

I would have guessed 1:1

Questions by Google


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

No Idea

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?

I would lean or hold on to one of the blades and get pushed around in circles.

3. How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?

1 for every 10,000 pianos

4. 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?

Roughly 1.5 boys : 1 girl (Don't have time to do the math, I'm going to get back to this one)


5. Describe a chicken using a programming language.

Hen pecking


Questions by Microsoft

1. You have a bucket of jelly beans. Some are red, some are blue, and some green. With your eyes closed, pick out 2 of a like color. How many do you have to grab to be sure you have 2 of the same?

You can't be sure.

2. Pairs of primes separated by a single number are called prime pairs. Examples are 17 and 19. Prove that the number between a prime pair is always divisible by 6 (assuming both numbers in the pair are greater than 6). Now prove that there are no ‘prime triples.’

Forget about it.

3. Imagine an analog clock set to 12 o’clock. Note that the hour and minute hands overlap. How many times each day do both the hour and minute hands overlap? How would you determine the exact times of the day that this occurs?

24? This is too obvious, I'm missing somthing.

4. How much does a 747 weigh?

50 tons

5. Imagine a disk spinning like a record player turn table. Half of the disk is black and the other is white. Assume you have an unlimited number of color sensors. How many sensors would you have to place around the disk to determine the direction the disk is spinning? Where would they be placed?

Two, anywhere but directly opposite each other

The hour hand moves .5 degrees a minute and the minute hand moves 6 degrees a minute.

At 1:05, the minute hand will be at 30 deg and the hour hand will be at 32.5. At 1:06, the minute hand will be at 35 and the hour hand at 33. So they'll cross over sometime between 1:05 and 1:06.

I would do the same calculation for each hour.

Sometime between 2:11 and 2:12.
Sometime between 3:15 and 3:16
4:22
Between 5:25 and 5:26
Between 6:30 and 6:31
...

Holy c**p! Won't be interviewing at these places anytime soon...But I also don't think they actually care about the interviewee getting the right answer, more the thought process and the way they try to problem solve.

When I interviewed from Microsoft, they asked me an easy one:

You walk 1 mile south, 1 mile east, and then 1 mile north, and end up at the same place as you started at.

Question: Where did you start, and how many places like this are there?

I heard that one when I was ten.

I wasn't impressed with their questions. But they did fly me to Seattle and buy me a kosher dinner.

Questions by Google


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

As many as the school bus can fit.

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?

Blunt one of the blades with the hammer in my pocket and hold on tight for the ride.

3. How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?

1 per 654 piano players.

4. 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?

1:1

5. Describe a chicken using a programming language.

Technophobe.

Questions by Microsoft

1. You have a bucket of jelly beans. Some are red, some are blue, and some green. With your eyes closed, pick out 2 of a like color. How many do you have to grab to be sure you have 2 of the same?

4

2. Pairs of primes separated by a single number are called prime pairs. Examples are 17 and 19. Prove that the number between a prime pair is always divisible by 6 (assuming both numbers in the pair are greater than 6). Now prove that there are no 'prime triples.'
That's really interesting. It's probably because in order to be a prime, the number has to not be divisible by 2 and 3, which are the most common numbers of divisibility. When there is a prime pair, something happens between them and the number in the middle becomes divisible by 6 (2x3). I can't because there's 1,3,5.


3. Imagine an analog clock set to 12 o'clock. Note that the hour and minute hands overlap. How many times each day do both the hour and minute hands overlap? How would you determine the exact times of the day that this occurs?

22 times (I cheated, but we had this question in school once.)

4. How much does a 747 weigh?

With or without fuel?

5. Imagine a disk spinning like a record player turn table. Half of the disk is black and the other is white. Assume you have an unlimited number of color sensors. How many sensors would you have to place around the disk to determine the direction the disk is spinning? Where would they be placed?

2. Opposite. See which it picks up- black or white.

Taken from here:
http://royal.pingdom.com/?p=338
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1 isn't prime.

You're right, 3,5,7.

Isn't this a question Nechama was asking the other day? Seems like 1/2 of all births will be boys, anyway you slice it.

At some point a woman stops having kids, so if she has 10 girls and stops you lost your 1:1