> Asking math questions might exclude some good candidates. Every question can exclude a good candidate, especially if you only ask the question and tick the "

> Asking math questions might exclude some good candidates. Every question can exclude a good candidate, especially if you only ask the question and tick the "correct/incorrect answer" box. However, often you can learn the most interesting trait from asking a question which the candidate can't answer right off the bat: How does the candidate deal with failure or lack of knowledge. Does she/he start guessing? Does she/he ask the right questions moving in the general direction of solving the problem? I'm not checking for academic knowledge in interviews. > and even learn new paradigms when necessary. This often requires knowledge about the stuff you don't know. That is a value of formal education: Not the stuff that you memorize, the bigger value I derive from my formal education is all that "I know that there's a solution to the problem but can't remember exactly" kind of knowledge. I can't remember all the sort algorithms I had to code, but I remember there's more than one and that there are tradeoffs between all of them. So if I'm constrained on memory and have a pre-sorted list I can go luck up how bubblesort is implemented exactly. That's a knowledge that self-taught programmers often lack [1]. > being good with maths and being a productive programmer are not necessarily two things that always come together. No, nobody proclaimed so. But having a trait for problem solving and logical puzzles certainly helps :) [1] n.b: often. Some of them have read and digested tons of theory books which could count as formal education.