The Google Interview has some strange questions on it. Here are my answers:

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

1 trillion

(then I draw a Dr. Evil Picture)

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?

Plead to be taken back out.

3. How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?

As much as possible.

4. How would you find out if a machine’s stack grows up or down in memory?

Ask someone.

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

Hey. Kid. Google it.

6. How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?

24

7. You have to get from point A to point B. You don’t know if you can get there. What would you do?

Try.

8. Imagine you have a closet full of shirts. It’s very hard to find a shirt. So what can you do to organize your shirts for easy retrieval?

Tell my wife or a maid to do it.

9. Every man in a village of 100 married couples has cheated on his wife. Every wife in the village instantly knows when a man other than her husband has cheated, but does not know when her own husband has. The village has a law that does not allow for adultery. Any wife who can prove that her husband is unfaithful must kill him that very day. The women of the village would never disobey this law. One day, the queen of the village visits and announces that at least one husband has been unfaithful. What happens?

They kill the queen - she’s the messenger (they always kill the messenger).

10. 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

11. If the probability of observing a car in 30 minutes on a highway is 0.95, what is the probability of observing a car in 10 minutes (assuming constant default probability)?

About 63% via .95 =(n+n*(1-n))+n(1-(n+n*(1-n)))

(actually, I think it has to do with logs and that’s slightly off).

12. If you look at a clock and the time is 3:15, what is the angle between the hour and the minute hands? (The answer to this is not zero!)

360/12/4 degrees.

13. Four people need to cross a rickety rope bridge to get back to their camp at night. Unfortunately, they only have one flashlight and it only has enough light left for seventeen minutes. The bridge is too dangerous to cross without a flashlight, and it’s only strong enough to support two people at any given time. Each of the campers walks at a different speed. One can cross the bridge in 1 minute, another in 2 minutes, the third in 5 minutes, and the slow poke takes 10 minutes to cross. How do the campers make it across in 17 minutes?

1 goes with 2 = 2 mins
1 returns with the flashlight = 1 min
5 goes with 10 = 10 mins
2 returns = 2 mins
1 + 2 go = 2 mins

but really, how the fuck would they know the flashlight has 17 minutes left on it?

14. You are at a party with a friend and 10 people are present including you and the friend. your friend makes you a wager that for every person you find that has the same birthday as you, you get $1; for every person he finds that does not have the same birthday as you, he gets $2. would you accept the wager?

Maybe . . . but only if i was really shitfaced.

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

What do you mean, an African or European Swallow?

16. 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?

weigh balls 1, 2, 3 (set 1) against 4 against 4 and 5 and 6 (set 2)

- if not equal, take the heavier set and weigh 1 v 2 (or 4 v 5 if set 2 was heavier)

- if not equal the heavier ball is the it

- if equal it is the odd ball is heaviest.

- if set 1 and 2 are equal weight 7 v 8 and the heavier is the heaviest.

17. You have five pirates, ranked from 5 to 1 in descending order. The top pirate has the right to propose how 100 gold coins should be divided among them. But the others get to vote on his plan, and if fewer than half agree with him, he gets killed. How should he allocate the gold in order to maximize his share but live to enjoy it? (Hint: One pirate ends up with 98 percent of the gold.)

Wrong shitbag. You tell a pirate he’s gonna get 1 gold piece out of 100 and he’s gonna vote to kill you. You can reason with him all you want, but he’s gonna vote to fucking kill you. It’s not game theory, it’s human emotions and common sense.

20/20/20/20/20 or something close to it.

Hint: They’re fucking Pirates, not Game theory doctorates. If anyone get’s fucked they’re gonna vote to kill the others.

I’d vote to kill you if you if you gave me only 1 piece.

ARRRRRRGGGGG!