Odd Ball Interview Questions

[clade]

I came across this today and wonderd if anyone else has had any random questions given to them in interviews and how hard you have tried to answer them without looking like a spanner?

Taken from link:

• “How many basketballs can you fit in this room?”
• "How do you weigh an elephant without using a weigh machine?”
• “You have 8 pennies, 7 weigh the same, one weighs less. You also have a judges scale. Find the one that weighs less in less than 3 steps.”
• There are three boxes, one contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled such that no label identifies the actual contents of the box it labels. Opening just one box, and without looking in the box, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly?”

 

[clade]

True, the point was: do you really expect it to be in an interview?

another one that I didnt put in thats a logic question was

“Given the numbers 1 to 1000, what is the minimum numbers guesses needed to find a specific number if you are given the hint ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ for each guess you make.”

 

[clade]

Now, spheres don't pack together perfectly efficiently. The most efficient packing arragement is where you have staggered layers. This has a density of Pi/(2*sqrt(3)). Multiplying this by our original amount gives us 4150 basketballs in a room 12' x 12' x 8'.

If you can do this in your head then kudos to you!