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Because we presume that an interviewee is desperate enough that they won't give the "honest" answer - well, I'll google that and see if I can't find someone else who has already found the answer.

Seriously, between Google and Wolfram Alpha, do you think that any of these inane questions can't be answered within a reasonable level of proximity?

Don't believe me? I just googled "golf balls in a school bus" and had a page full of answers in seconds including how they solved it as well as the number. https://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&#...

Better, why not ask me to pseudo-code a problem you've faced recently? Wouldn't that tell you a LOT more about whether my skills and your needs align?

2 comments

Go use Google and Wolfram Alpha to find the answers to "how many fashion items are for sale on the internet?"

If you can do that, I'm truly impressed by your google-fu. Also, as I said, the fashion items question is a problem I faced at my last job.

I highlighted your question, right-clicked and chose to Google it, and it was answer number 3 on the returned results. I suspect Alpha would give more useful detail, but then I really think that wasn't what you were looking for.

Slightly more seriously, going to Google first for ANY such problem would highlight both what is already known about the issue, and profitable answers to look for further information.

Then why wouldn't you ask a real-world question like that, rather than a stupid one about filling a bus with golf balls?

> Seriously, between Google and Wolfram Alpha, do you think that any of these inane questions can't be answered within a reasonable level of proximity?

Using Google? 3 in 600 searches used the + operator, and of those 2 were wrong.

Saying "I would understand the problem, I would work out a suitable search query, I would use available resources, I would evaluate the responses I got; here's the result when I used a typical question like this".