4 ms·
I personally think that "estimation" questions (sometimes called "Fermi problems" since Enrico Fermi was famous for asking them) are a great way of gauging an i
by morpher 13y ago
I personally think that "estimation" questions (sometimes called "Fermi problems" since Enrico Fermi was famous for asking them) are a great way of gauging an individuals thought process.
They aren't about getting the right answer, but rather about seeing how one breaks down a seemingly difficult question into simpler pieces and determines what can be reasonably estimated. They really don't fall into the category of "brain teasers" which involve some sort of trick.
However, the statement that software developers are not asked these types of question is not universally true, nor should it be. In and SDE interview, I was asked an estimation question that was both interesting and relevant to the position (although I signed an NDA, so I'm not going to give specifics).
In my case, there were several pieces of required information that I realized I couldn't reasonably estimate on the spot, so I gave a description of how I could ballpark them from quick measurements.
- yelnatz 13y agoHow many golf balls can you fit in a bus? How many plumbers in New York?
- jareds 13y agoYou can fit two goulf balls in a bus and there are two plumbers in New York.
- morpher 13y agoAs I said, relevant to an SDE position at Google. Those are not.
- gaylemcd 13y agoTry something like: I have a 100 billion webpages and wish to build a hashtable-like structure that maps from each word to a list of the documents that contains that that word. How many computers do I need to hold this hashtable?
- fecak 13y agoI'm a little surprised that all the comments thus far and the article itself never used the term "Fermi Problems". Whether or not someone calls them a brainteaser is up to them I guess. I too think of brainteasers as trick questions with some gotcha answer that you normally wouldn't think of based on how the question was phrased. Fermi problems aren't in that category for me either.