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ArmyofHarmony said:
Answer,
Romeo and Juliet are both Fish, the breeze blew their bowl over
Problem Solving Interview Questions!
- Thread starter Hamish
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Answer,
Romeo and Juliet are both Fish, the breeze blew their bowl over
Mohinder said:
I did say bigger, and it wouldn't have to be massively bigger. It would only have to have dimensions bigger than the diameter.
Like I said they probably don't care what answer you come up with, just how you think about it so you'd pose things like:
They could be round because tunnels are traditionally round, but then why is this? I'd probably guess it's because an unsupported round tunnel is more stable than a rectangular one.
Maybe back in these golden olden days of round tunnels, metal was more expensive so they wanted to use the minimum possible to cover each tunnel. Nowadays it's probably cheaper to make them rectangular, but since we're still using lots of Victorian drains what's the point in changing? It'll probably cost more to convert them to rectangles than it would to make more circular covers...........
....and so on and so forth until they finally give in and ask you another ridiculous question.
Hamish said:
They don't really care what answer you come up with - they just want you to show a logical train of thought. Its pretty similar to the "how many petrol stations are there in the UK?" question. Your quite entitled to ask them some questions to get you started. . .
So, first ask if they only mean the UK (they will probably say yes). . Then (if you don't know) ask what the approximate population of the UK is. From there you can make a load of estimates:
~ 1 car for every 2 people
~ 75% have alarms
~ An alarm is probably "going off" for about 1 minute per month
From there you can work it out. Obviously these estimates combine to give you a massive error, but at least it shows some train of logical thinking.
With a round cover in a round hole it could never fall in as the lip that the manhole cover fits in would stop it falling down. With a square, rectangular or triangular manhole cover and hole all you need to do is lift the cover on end and it will fall down unless the cover is stupidly thick.
Can't really call it a rectangular manhole cover if it doesn't cover the manhole!
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Don't think so, the hubble constant says the universe is expanding at less than the speed of light, so we shouldn't be able to, presuming that the point of the big bang was where everything started, the light should have overtaken us...timbob said:
obviously a rectangle manhole cover could fall in but a square one CANT.
If you have a square cover with the counter-sunk (slightly smaller) lip as with circle ones then the diamater of the square is always wider than this lip and it will never fall in, as with the circle ones so this is not simply the answer...
If you have a square cover with the counter-sunk (slightly smaller) lip as with circle ones then the diamater of the square is always wider than this lip and it will never fall in, as with the circle ones so this is not simply the answer...
Or you can have a rectangle where both dimensions are greater than the diameter, but anyway as several of us have already said it's not about the answer you come up with.Docaroo said:
It's an interview for consultancy - you have to learn to come up with BS quickly and this is what the question is testing.
M0KUJ1N said:Does posting here to get people to answer the question for you count as "problem solving" though?
Yes because if you don't know the answer you are supposed to go and find it by any means necessary. I answered 18 questions in the interview, and they told me to go away and answer the other 2 that I couldn't answer at home using any means necessary, e.g. Google / The good people of OcUK. So you can have your
back!Phnom_Penh said:
Yes, that's true and that's why I said theoretically. I think the interviewer is probably just trying to gague and OP's general level of understanding of 4 dimensional (if we can call it that?) things. Lots of people I speak to just can't get their head around the whole idea of seeing the sun as it was 8 minutes ago. The explanation is simple once you get the principle, but some can't.
