I tend to agree with the author, but there are indeed some things you can infer from the type of response you get. I have a friend who was doing a technical int

I tend to agree with the author, but there are indeed some things you can infer from the type of response you get. I have a friend who was doing a technical interview, and things seemed to be going weird. It seemed that the candidate knew the answers to most of his questions, but when pressured further he couldn't come up with alternative solutions. It was like those people who know the motions of math, but don't understand what it's for. So he decided to ask one of these riddle questions: "How many hairs does a dog have?" and the candidate answered that it depended on the dog. So far so good. But then he started rambling: "Well, if it's a dog from the street, the dog might have scabies, and thus this dog has less hair. Of course, this is a perfectly valid answer, but it is the failure of applying math/statistical thinking into his answer what was telling. Now, I'm sure some people are thinking "that's anecdotical evidence" and it is, but what is the alternative if your intention is to hire mathematically inclined candidates?