How do you answer questions in interviews for which you think, they are senseless?
I am mentioning a few questions which are usually the part of interviews, I dont understand what is the intent behind then. Of course one might argue, just to see how you think, or how you react, but isn't it better if you ask a more meaningful puzzle, at least for which you can be sure of answer, or justify unanimously. For example, see this bulb puzzle:
a meaningful puzzle: a closed room has three lightbulbs, and outside the room you have 3 switches, one for each bulb, but you do not know which switch is for which bulb. Find out which one is for which, you cannot open the door, only once when you have the answer.
Well, the crown jewels according to me in the category of meaningless are:
- A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?
- How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?
- You have to get from point A to point B. You don’t know if you can get there. What would you do?
- How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?
- 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?
What is best strategy to answer in such cases?
Addendum -- An excerpt from Nikesh Arora's (President, Global Sales Operations and Business Development for Google Inc.) interview --
" I was travelling with Larry, on a plane on a clear day, and looking at the landmass below he was calculating how long it would a fleet of cars to map every mile of every road in the US -- perhaps 500 cars in sex months or thousand cars in the 3 months? Thats how his mind works. thats's how Google Street View was born..."
I am sure i would have turned down a thought like that. s hit me!!!
Answer
Some of your "meaningless questions" are actually known as Fermi Problems, and can not only be fun, but show that you can derive an accurate estimate quickly using known quantities.