Answers To 15 Google Interview Questions

Answers To 15 Google Interview Questions That Will Make You Feel ... http://www.businessinsider.com/answers-to-15-google-interview-quest...
Answers To 15 Google Interview Questions

That Will Make You Feel Stupid
NICHOLAS CARLSON
NOV. 5, 2009, 11:15 AM
Google HR which is hiring again asks job seekers incredibly difficult interview questions.
Yesterday, we highlighted 15 (of the 140 compiled by professional interview coach Lewis Lin) that made us feel
dumber than usual.
These questions befuddled us both with their deceptive simplicity (why are manhole covers round?) and their
demand for a handy calculator.
Nevertheless, we refuse to fail our readers! So we've come up with answers for each of the 15 that confused us
(and thousands upon thousands of you).
See the questions, then
See the answers >>

Photo: eviltomthai
1 of 11 23-04-2017 13:27
How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?

Job: Product Manager
Answer: This is one of those questions Google asks just to

see if the applicant can explain the key challenge to
solving the problem.
Reader Matt Beuchamp came up with a dandy answer,

writing:
I figure a standard school bus is about 8ft wide by 6ft high

by 20 feet long - this is just a guess based on the thousands
of hours I have been trapped behind school buses while
traffic in all directions is stopped.
That means 960 cubic feet and since there are 1728 cubic
inches in a cubit foot, that means about 1.6 million cubic
inches.
I calculate the volume of a golf ball to be about 2.5 cubic inches (4/3 * pi * .85) as .85 inches is the radius of a golf ball.
Divide that 2.5 cubic inches into 1.6 million and you come up with 660,000 golf balls. However, since there are seats and
crap in there taking up space and also since the spherical shape of a golf ball means there will be considerable empty space
between them when stacked, I'll round down to 500,000 golf balls.
Which sounds ludicrous. I would have spitballed no more than 100k. But I stand by my math.
Of course, if we are talking about the kind of bus that George Bush went to school on or Barney Frank rides to work every
day, it would be half that....or 250,000 golf balls.
How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?
Job: Product Manager How
Answer: This is one of those questions where the trick is to come up with an easier answer than the one that's
seemingly being called for. We'd say. "$10 per window."
2 of 11 23-04-2017 13:27
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?
Answer: This one caused quite the debate, but we figured

it out following these steps:
Imagine you have 10 couples who have 10 babies. 5

will be girls. 5 will be boys. (Total babies made: 10,
with 5 boys and 5 girls)
The 5 couples who had girls will have 5 babies. Half
(2.5) will be girls. Half (2.5) will be boys. Add 2.5
boys to the 5 already born and 2.5 girls to the 5
already born. (Total babies made: 15, with 7.5 boys
and 7.5 girls.)
The 2.5 couples that had girls will have 2.5 babies. Half (1.25) will be boys and half (1.25) will be girls. Add 1.25
boys to the 7.5 boys already born and 1.25 girls to the 7.5 already born. (Total babies: 17.5 with 8.75 boys and 8.75
girls).
And so on, maintianing a 50/50 population.
3 of 11 23-04-2017 13:27
How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?

Job: Product Manager How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?
Photo: delgaudm
Answer: We'd answer "However many the market dictates. If pianos need tuning once a week, and it takes an hour to tune a
piano and a piano tuner works 8 hours a day for 5 days a week 40 pianos need tuning each week. We'd answer one for every
40 pianos."
On Wikipedia, they call this a Fermi problem.
The classic Fermi problem, generally attributed to Fermi,[2] is "How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?" A typical
solution to this problem would involve multiplying together a series of estimates that would yield the correct answer if the
estimates were correct. For example, we might make the following assumptions:
1. There are approximately 5,000,000 people living in Chicago.

2. On average, there are two persons in each household in Chicago.
3. Roughly one household in twenty has a piano that is tuned regularly.
4. Pianos that are tuned regularly are tuned on average about once per year.
5. It takes a piano tuner about two hours to tune a piano, including travel time.
6. Each piano tuner works eight hours in a day, five days in a week, and 50 weeks in a year.
From these assumptions we can compute that the number of piano tunings in a single year in Chicago is
(5,000,000 persons in Chicago) / (2 persons/household) (1 piano/20 households) (1 piano tuning per piano per
year) = 125,000 piano tunings per year in Chicago.
And we can similarly calculate that the average piano tuner performs
(50 weeks/year)(5 days/week)(8 hours/day)(1 piano tuning per 2 hours per piano tuner) = 1000 piano tunings
per year per piano tuner.
Dividing gives
(125,000 piano tuning per year in Chicago) / (1000 piano tunings per year per piano tuner) = 125 piano tuners in
Chicago.
A famous example of a Fermi-problem-like estimate is the Drake equation, which seeks to estimate the number of intelligent
civilizations in the galaxy. The basic question of why, if there are a significant number of such civilizations, ours has never
encountered any others is called the Fermi paradox.
4 of 11 23-04-2017 13:27
Why are manhole covers round?

Job: Software Engineer
Answer: So it doesn't fall through the manhole (when the

plane ordinarily flush with the plane of the street goes
perpendicular to the street.)
Photo: brunkfordbraun
Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco

Answer: Again, this one is all about the interviewer seeing

how the interviewee would attack the problem. We'd start
our answer by asking, "what kind of disaster are we
planning for?"
5 of 11 23-04-2017 13:27
How many times a day does a clocks hands overlap?

Job: Product Manager How many times a day does a clocks hands
overlap?
Answer: 22 times. From WikiAnswers:
AM
12:00
1:05
2:11
3:16
4:22
5:27
6:33
7:38
8:44
9:49
10:55
PM
12:00
1:05
2:11
3:16
4:22
5:27
6:33
7:38
8:44
9:49
10:55
6 of 11 23-04-2017 13:27
Explain the significance of "dead beef"

Our (wrong) answer: Beef is always dead. Calling

something "dead beef" is redundant -- a no-no for coders.
The actual answer, from a reader:
DEADBEEF is a hexadecimal value that has was used in

debugging back in the mainframe/assembly days because it
was easy to see when marking and finding specific memory
in pages of hex dumps. Most computer science graduates
have seen this at least in their assembly language classes
in college and that's why they expect software engineers to
know it. From wikipedia:
"0xDEADBEEF ("dead beef") is used by IBM RS/6000

systems, Mac OS on 32-bit PowerPC processors and the
Commodore Amiga as a magic debug value. On Sun Microsystems' Solaris, it marks freed kernel memory. On OpenVMS
running on Alpha processors, DEAD_BEEF can be seen by pressing CTRL-T.[3]"
A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?
Answer: He landed on Boardwalk. (Painful, right?)
7 of 11 23-04-2017 13:27
You need to check that your friend, Bob, has your correct phone
number
, but you cannot ask him directly. You must write the
question on a card which and give it to Eve who will take
the card to Bob and return the answer to you. What must
you write on the card, besides the question, to ensure Bob
can encode the message so that Eve cannot read your
phone number?
Answer: Since you are just "checking," you ask him to call
you at a certain time. If he doesn't, he doesn't have your
number.
Too simple? A reader suggest: "In that case you need a

check-sum. Have Bob add all the digits of your phone
number together, write down the total, and pass 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 half of the pirates agree with you, you die. You're
How do you recommend apportioning the gold in such a way that you get a good share of the booty, but still survive?
Job: Engineering Manager
Answer: You divide the booty evenly between the top 51% of the crew.
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?
Answer: Reader Hyloka nailed this one first:
Take 6 of the 8 balls and put 3 on each side of the scale. If

the heavy ball isn't in the group of 6, you know it's one of
the remaining 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, pick any 2 and put them
on the scale. If the heavy ball is in that group of 2, you
know which one it is. If both balls are of equal weight, then
the heavy ball is the one you sat to the side.
8 of 11 23-04-2017 13:27
You are given 2 eggs

You have access to a 100-story building. Eggs can be
very hard or very fragile means it may break if dropped
from the first floor or may not even break if dropped from
100th floor. Both eggs are identical. You need to figure out
the highest floor of a 100-story building an egg can be
dropped without breaking. The question is how many
drops you need to make. You are allowed to break 2 eggs
in the process.
Answer: The maximum egg drops for this method is 14

times.
Instead of partitioning the floors by 10, Start at the 14th

floor, and then go up 13 floors, then 12, then 11, then 10,
9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 until you get to the 99th floor, then here. If
the egg were to break at the 100th floor, it would take 12 drops (or 11 if you assume that it would break at the 100th floor).
Say, for example, that the 49th floor was the highest floor, the number of drops would be the 14th, 27th, 39th, 50th (the egg
would break on the 50th floor) plus the 40, 41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48, and 49th floor for a total of 14 drops.
Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.

Answer: The point here is to test the applicant's ability to

communicate complex ideas in simple language. Here's
our attempt, "A database is a machine that remembers lots
of information about lots of things. People use them to
help remember that information. Go play outside."
9 of 11 23-04-2017 13:27
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?
Answer: This one is all about the judging interviewee's

creativity. We'd try to break the electric motor.
Feeling smug? Not so fast
15 More Google
Interview Questions
That Will Make You
Feel Stupid
Get the latest Google stock price here.
10 of 11 23-04-2017 13:27
11 of 11 23-04-2017 13:27

Answers To 15 Google Interview Questions

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Answers To 15 Google Interview Questions That Will Make You Feel ... http://www.businessinsider.com/answers-to-15-google-interview-quest...

Answers To 15 Google Interview Questions

See the questions, then

See the answers >>

How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?

Answer: This is one of those questions Google asks just to

Reader Matt Beuchamp came up with a dandy answer,

I figure a standard school bus is about 8ft wide by 6ft high

In a country in which people only want boys

Job: Product Manager

Answer: This one caused quite the debate, but we figured

Imagine you have 10 couples who have 10 babies. 5

How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?

On Wikipedia, they call this a Fermi problem.

1. There are approximately 5,000,000 people living in Chicago.

Why are manhole covers round?

Answer: So it doesn't fall through the manhole (when the

Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco

Answer: Again, this one is all about the interviewer seeing

How many times a day does a clocks hands overlap?

Explain the significance of "dead beef"

Our (wrong) answer: Beef is always dead. Calling

The actual answer, from a reader:

DEADBEEF is a hexadecimal value that has was used in

"0xDEADBEEF ("dead beef") is used by IBM RS/6000

Answer: He landed on Boardwalk. (Painful, right?)

Job: Software Engineer

Too simple? A reader suggest: "In that case you need a

You're the captain of a pirate ship

Job: Engineering Manager

You have eight balls all of the same size

Job: Product Manager

Answer: Reader Hyloka nailed this one first:

Take 6 of the 8 balls and put 3 on each side of the scale. If

You are given 2 eggs

Job: Product Manager

Answer: The maximum egg drops for this method is 14

Instead of partitioning the floors by 10, Start at the 14th

Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.

Answer: The point here is to test the applicant's ability to

You are shrunk to the height of a nickel

Job: Product Manager

Answer: This one is all about the judging interviewee's

Feeling smug? Not so fast

Get the latest Google stock price here.

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