A friend of mine had an interview a couple weeksago with Google Inc.He provided me a list of just some of the questionshe was asked. I’veadded a few more from others I have talked to who hadinterviews withthe internet giant, Google, as well. See if you cananswer them. Manyare open ended with several right answers, therefore Idid not providethe answers.
1. How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?
2.You are shrunk to the height of a nickel andyour mass is proportionallyreduced so as to maintain your originaldensity. You are then throwninto an empty glass blender. The bladeswill 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’svery hard to find ashirt. So what can you do to organize your shirtsfor easy retrieval?
9.Every man in a village of 100 married coupleshas cheated on his wife.Every wife in the village instantly knows whena man other than herhusband has cheated, but does not know when herown husband has. Thevillage has a law that does not allow foradultery. Any wife who canprove that her husband is unfaithful mustkill him that very day. Thewomen of the village would never disobeythis law. One day, the queen ofthe village visits and announces thatat least one husband has beenunfaithful. What happens?
10. In a country in which people onlywant boys,every family continues to have children until they have aboy. if theyhave 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 30minutes on a highway is0.95, what is the probability of observing acar in 10 minutes (assumingconstant default probability)?
12. If you look at a clock andthe time is 3:15,what is the angle between the hour and the minutehands? (The answer tothis is not zero!)
13. Four people need tocross a rickety rope bridgeto get back to their camp at night.Unfortunately, they only have oneflashlight and it only has enoughlight left for seventeen minutes. Thebridge is too dangerous to crosswithout a flashlight, and it’s onlystrong enough to support two peopleat any given time. Each of thecampers walks at a different speed. Onecan cross the bridge in 1minute, another in 2 minutes, the third in 5minutes, and the slow poketakes 10 minutes to cross. How do the campersmake it across in 17minutes?
14. You are at a party with afriend and 10 peopleare present including you and the friend. yourfriend makes you a wagerthat for every person you find that has thesame birthday as you, youget $1; for every person he finds that doesnot have the same birthdayas you, he gets $2. would you accept thewager?
15. How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?
16.You have eight balls all of the same size. 7 ofthem weigh the same, andone of them weighs slightly more. How can youfind the ball that isheavier by using a balance and only two weighings?
17. You havefive pirates, ranked from 5 to 1 indescending order. The top pirate hasthe right to propose how 100 goldcoins should be divided among them.But the others get to vote on hisplan, and if fewer than half agreewith him, he gets killed. How shouldhe allocate the gold in order tomaximize his share but live to enjoyit? (Hint: One pirate ends up with98 percent of the gold.)
Do you still think you have what it takes to work for Google?