Your answer is great, however the questions comes with a disclaimer: > Please understand: what I'm looking for here is a total vacuum in one of these areas.

Your answer is great, however the questions comes with a disclaimer: > Please understand: what I'm looking for here is a total vacuum in one of these areas. It's OK if they struggle a little and then figure it out. It's OK if they need some minor hints or prompting. I don't mind if they're rusty or slow. What you're looking for is candidates who are utterly clueless, or horribly confused, about the area in question. If you follow this, the way you reply is perfect. Someone using divisions would work too. Someone simply mapping all the values of a byte to the number of bits that are 1 would work too.