Math/CompSci Interview Question - Thoughts?
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From: Pascal J. Bourguignon on 25 Nov 2009 04:33 mike3 <mike4ty4(a)yahoo.com> writes: > On Nov 25, 12:06�am, "John W. Krahn" <some...(a)example.com> wrote: >> Richard Heathfield wrote: >> > In >> > <805a7a21-f99b-4eb9-abb0-fbde47cb9...(a)k19g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>, >> > mike3 wrote: >> >> > <snip> >> >> >> Oh yes, and I forgot to add: how does one train the "symbolic" >> >> thinking? >> >> > Step 1: obtain a pointy stick. >> >> Or some fresh fruit. >> > > What's the point here? http://www.leftinthedark.org.uk/ -- __Pascal Bourguignon__
From: Pascal J. Bourguignon on 25 Nov 2009 04:37 mike3 <mike4ty4(a)yahoo.com> writes: > On Nov 24, 6:32�pm, mike3 <mike4...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >> On Nov 21, 10:24�am, p...(a)informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon) >> wrote: > <snip> >> > Not a single one. �You have to develop your knowledge of algorithms, >> > mathematics, your symbolic thinking and your imagination in these >> > matters. >> >> You say not a "single" one, so does that mean no course would do it, >> or >> you'd need multiple ones? After all, courses and books (multiple) can >> be used to increase the first 2 areas (knowledge of algorithms and >> mathematics). >> > <snip> > > Oh yes, and I forgot to add: how does one train the "symbolic" > thinking? I don't have a statistically valid study, but I observed a few people who didn't play with lego (or at least mecano) as a child had more difficulty in building programs. -- __Pascal Bourguignon__
From: red floyd on 25 Nov 2009 12:00 On Nov 24, 11:06 pm, "John W. Krahn" <some...(a)example.com> wrote: > Richard Heathfield wrote: > > In > > <805a7a21-f99b-4eb9-abb0-fbde47cb9...(a)k19g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>, > > mike3 wrote: > > > <snip> > > >> Oh yes, and I forgot to add: how does one train the "symbolic" > >> thinking? > > > Step 1: obtain a pointy stick. > > Or some fresh fruit. > Or a Bengal Tiger.
From: Andy Champ on 25 Nov 2009 15:19 Pascal J. Bourguignon wrote: > > I don't have a statistically valid study, but I observed a few people > who didn't play with lego (or at least mecano) as a child had more > difficulty in building programs. > Cause or effect? (do people who make food engineers like to play with Lego and Meccano - or does playing with them make you an engineer?) It occurs to me though that if an interviewer asked me to write a sort I'd probably ask why. There are lots of standard sorts. The interesting part of a high performance sort is getting the data in and out, making best use of memory and CPU, things like that. If the data is in memory it's a trivial problem - because it was solved years ago. Although it does occur to me that if I have enough CPUs it might be worth partitioning the work into small sorts then merges... Andy
From: bartc on 25 Nov 2009 15:29
"Andrew Tomazos" <andrew(a)tomazos.com> wrote in message news:6a8340b8-19b0-4fda-96d5-e744aead1bd7(a)m26g2000yqb.googlegroups.com... >I was posed the following question in a technical interview for a > Software Engineering position by a major multinational NASDAQ company: > > [Paraphrasing] "You are given an array of 1,000,000 32-bit integers. > One int value x occurs 500,001 times or more in the array. Specify an > algorithm to determine x." How was it determined that one value occurs 500001 or more times? Perhaps more attention should have been paid to x at the time the 500001 figure was calculated... I quite liked Malcolm's idea of taking a small but random sample, choosing a handful of likely candidates, then counting occurrences of those. If no counts reach 500001, then repeat a few more times or until you know you've been given dud information. -- Bartc |