6 ms·

Google and the Internet have really changed our view on what is important to memorize. Interview questions today are more oriented towards behavioral quesitons

Google and the Internet have really changed our view on what is important to memorize. Interview questions today are more oriented towards behavioral quesitons and problem solving. 1. What countries bound France? 2. What city and country produce the finest china? ... 145. What is the heaviest kind of wood? 146. What is the lightest wood? Edit: incidentally, I think Edison's test is trying to measure curiosity. A curious person might have encountered a lot more trivia than a noncurious person. I've found curiosity trumps raw iq for creative problem solving, it drives a person to dig deeper into a problem.

hayksaakian 12y ago
I wonder if google search could pass this interview.
- CatsoCatsoCatso 12y ago
  It does surprisingly poorly. I ran the bottom 15 questions through a rudimentary web scraper & recorded Google's 'knowledge box' responses. http://www.sharecsv.com/s/1a4ebb9acec12392376164b7e770b54f/EdisonToGoogle.csv http://www.sharecsv.com/s/1a4ebb9acec12392376164b7e770b54f/E... I'm surprised it doesn't have an instant answer for the heaviest and lightest woods. Some of its answers don't quite get the question either. What are violin strings made of? Well we can be sure it's not cat guts. How is glucose made? We're only told the make up of it. Full list of Questions converted to Google queries: http://pastebin.com/wsr7UrGK http://pastebin.com/wsr7UrGK I'm not going to run the full list because I don't want Google thinking I'm a robot for the rest of the day (Captcha will trigger for my network).
  - cfontes 12y ago
    What about wolfgram?
  - smileysteve 12y ago
    > What are violin strings made of? Well we can be sure it's not cat guts Classically, the high e string is made of catgut, roughly cattle's gut.
- cowardlydragon 12y ago
  Watson?
IndianAstronaut 12y ago
I don't think it is happening quick enough. College education systems still revolve heavily around memorizing. Getting into medical school is a test of who can cram the most into their heads.
- ealexhudson 12y ago
  With medicine, you really don't have time to go Google something. Even in a slow-paced assessment, you need to gather data quickly and effectively, and make decisions. Patients might in the future be happy filling out long series of probing questions and then waiting for a few hours/days while someone does some Googling, but I doubt it. The practice of medicine by human Doctors probably can't be much further optimized from what it is right now.
  - pmjordan 12y ago
    The practice of medicine by human Doctors probably can't be much further optimized from what it is right now. Maybe this is true for the 95-99% most common of conditions. Doctors can be shockingly bad at diagnosing anything they don't see on a daily basis. (rare-ish conditions, unusual presentations, or anything discovered since they studied medicine) Google search is probably very inefficient for this kind of thing, but specialised search engines based on bayesian networks or similar might get you some leads on what to test for a lot faster than going from doctor to doctor in the hope that one of them might have an idea that pans out.
  - ChristianBundy 12y ago
    > The practice of medicine by human Doctors probably can't be much further optimized from what it is right now. Can you explain why you believe this? I'm having a very difficult time understanding where you're coming from.
  - echaozh 12y ago
    If you fill out a questionaire, why wait for a human to do the Googling? Shouldn't the machine be better at it, and isn't Watson closer to this goal then ever?
hf 12y ago
It is astonishing to me, how widespread fisher-wife's-tale-level conceptions about fundamental aspects of our existence are. I devoutly hope that you are not, upon contemplation, equate a well-versedness in general knowledge with mindless memorization. Is emergent behaviour of neural networks really that alien a concept? Is it possible to believe, in all earnestness, that factoids such as these remain isolated and inactive in your memory until recalled? These questions aren't there to test your ability to learn atomic facts without rhyme or reason. These questions, pitiful as they may seem, try to probe the breadth of your mental landscape.
- roel_v 12y ago
  Well, actually, according to Edison's defense of his test as linked to in the OP, he did try to gauge one's ability for rote memorization, and he didn't care about whether people knew about things beyond their immediate job. His 'theory' (highly flawed, I think) is that one needs excellent memory to be able to make decisions now, without needing to take the time to research them.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - Tycho 12y ago
    Same thing applies to programming interviews I guess. If you know the minutiae off by heart, then you will be able to make decisions and proceed with your coding immediately rather than take a diversion to research the details. Obviously being able to quickly research is also a very useful skill, but I think it's reasonable to expect a certain level of 'memorized knowledge' from a professional programmer.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >His 'theory' (highly flawed, I think) is that one needs excellent memory to be able to make decisions now, without needing to take the time to research them. I don't see any flaw in the theory. When you code for example, if you don't know in advance about several idioms, data structures, algorithms etc that's (most of the time) not something that you will make up later by researching and changing your program. It's simply something that will take you down a narrower path and constrain your programming. I'm not talking about knowing the details of algorithm X, or how to implement it from memory. But if you don't know it's existence even, it wont be an algorithm you'll consider when you write your program.
robin_reala 12y ago
I like the fact that the answer to number 1 has changed since 1921.
- philwelch 12y ago
  How so? Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Andorra, and Monaco bound France and have all done so since before 1921.
  - acheron 12y ago
    I don't know if this is what the OP was thinking of, but in the 1950s, Saar bordered it. So it's changed back, but that doesn't mean it hasn't changed.
    - robin_reala 12y ago
      I was actually thinking of the Channel Tunnel :)
  - FiatLuxDave 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Algeria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Algeria
  - Pinckney 12y ago
    Brazil and Suriname, since 1946.
VLM 12y ago
They strike me as interview discussion questions not simple memorization. Take the numerous distance calculations. Great circle? Theoretical tunnel thru the earth? Traditional maritime shipping routes or aircraft navigation routes which take into account prevailing winds and international boundaries etc? Oh so you produced a number which happens to be correct, here is a slide rule and the geographic coordinates I used, you can demonstrate spherical geometry to me now. Perhaps some ageism was involved although hard to tell if it was enforced to eliminate old people or young people, such as "deepest depth of the ocean". Data points that have stabilized in recent decades were not stable a century ago. How deep you think the ocean is depends a lot on when you learned how deep the ocean is, at least back then. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench
skywhopper 12y ago
For what it's worth, some actual intelligence tests from the period were remarkably similar, if a little easier. For example this group of (supposedly) actual questions from an Army IQ test ca WWI: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5293 http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5293
- thearn4 12y ago
  Interesting, it's basically trivia instead of an aptitude test. The ASVAB is certainly an improvement.
jpwagner 12y ago
Certainly it paints a picture of what was considered common knowledge and what was learned in schools at that time. Another thought is that there are a couple of different types of memorization going on here. For example no one memorizes a list of bordering states/countries; answers to those questions would indicate the strength of photographic memory.
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  I doubt most of these facts were taught in schools - which is probably the point. Finding answers to questions like these was difficult pre-Internet. You'd only have a chance of getting them right if you read very widely all the time, and remembered most of what you read. If I was competing with Edison and I genuinely thought his employees were able to ace that test, I'd be seriously worried, trivia or no. In reality they probably couldn't. Only a very tiny percentage of the population is going to have the wide interests and the eidetic recall needed to ace this list.
mrcactu5 12y ago
incidentally, I think Edison's test is trying to measure curiosity This test is ahead of its time and it is perfectly consistent with what we understand about Thomas Edison. I doubt anyone memorized the answers to this test - he is looking for signs of creativity. Edison's formula: Invention is going to come from trying 99 dead ends to find the 1% that works.
hackuser 12y ago
> I think Edison's test is trying to measure curiosity. He is measuring raw ability to recall. He explains it here: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9906E4D8133EEE3ABC4B51DFB667838A639EDE http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9906E4D813...

hayksaakian 12y ago

I wonder if google search could pass this interview.

CatsoCatsoCatso 12y ago
It does surprisingly poorly. I ran the bottom 15 questions through a rudimentary web scraper & recorded Google's 'knowledge box' responses. http://www.sharecsv.com/s/1a4ebb9acec12392376164b7e770b54f/EdisonToGoogle.csv http://www.sharecsv.com/s/1a4ebb9acec12392376164b7e770b54f/E... I'm surprised it doesn't have an instant answer for the heaviest and lightest woods. Some of its answers don't quite get the question either. What are violin strings made of? Well we can be sure it's not cat guts. How is glucose made? We're only told the make up of it. Full list of Questions converted to Google queries: http://pastebin.com/wsr7UrGK http://pastebin.com/wsr7UrGK I'm not going to run the full list because I don't want Google thinking I'm a robot for the rest of the day (Captcha will trigger for my network).
- cfontes 12y ago
  What about wolfgram?
- smileysteve 12y ago
  > What are violin strings made of? Well we can be sure it's not cat guts Classically, the high e string is made of catgut, roughly cattle's gut.
cowardlydragon 12y ago
Watson?

IndianAstronaut 12y ago

I don't think it is happening quick enough. College education systems still revolve heavily around memorizing. Getting into medical school is a test of who can cram the most into their heads.

ealexhudson 12y ago
With medicine, you really don't have time to go Google something. Even in a slow-paced assessment, you need to gather data quickly and effectively, and make decisions. Patients might in the future be happy filling out long series of probing questions and then waiting for a few hours/days while someone does some Googling, but I doubt it. The practice of medicine by human Doctors probably can't be much further optimized from what it is right now.
- pmjordan 12y ago
  The practice of medicine by human Doctors probably can't be much further optimized from what it is right now. Maybe this is true for the 95-99% most common of conditions. Doctors can be shockingly bad at diagnosing anything they don't see on a daily basis. (rare-ish conditions, unusual presentations, or anything discovered since they studied medicine) Google search is probably very inefficient for this kind of thing, but specialised search engines based on bayesian networks or similar might get you some leads on what to test for a lot faster than going from doctor to doctor in the hope that one of them might have an idea that pans out.
- ChristianBundy 12y ago
  > The practice of medicine by human Doctors probably can't be much further optimized from what it is right now. Can you explain why you believe this? I'm having a very difficult time understanding where you're coming from.
- echaozh 12y ago
  If you fill out a questionaire, why wait for a human to do the Googling? Shouldn't the machine be better at it, and isn't Watson closer to this goal then ever?

hf 12y ago

It is astonishing to me, how widespread fisher-wife's-tale-level conceptions about fundamental aspects of our existence are. I devoutly hope that you are not, upon contemplation, equate a well-versedness in general knowledge with mindless memorization. Is emergent behaviour of neural networks really that alien a concept? Is it possible to believe, in all earnestness, that factoids such as these remain isolated and inactive in your memory until recalled? These questions aren't there to test your ability to learn atomic facts without rhyme or reason. These questions, pitiful as they may seem, try to probe the breadth of your mental landscape.

roel_v 12y ago
Well, actually, according to Edison's defense of his test as linked to in the OP, he did try to gauge one's ability for rote memorization, and he didn't care about whether people knew about things beyond their immediate job. His 'theory' (highly flawed, I think) is that one needs excellent memory to be able to make decisions now, without needing to take the time to research them.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Tycho 12y ago
  Same thing applies to programming interviews I guess. If you know the minutiae off by heart, then you will be able to make decisions and proceed with your coding immediately rather than take a diversion to research the details. Obviously being able to quickly research is also a very useful skill, but I think it's reasonable to expect a certain level of 'memorized knowledge' from a professional programmer.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >His 'theory' (highly flawed, I think) is that one needs excellent memory to be able to make decisions now, without needing to take the time to research them. I don't see any flaw in the theory. When you code for example, if you don't know in advance about several idioms, data structures, algorithms etc that's (most of the time) not something that you will make up later by researching and changing your program. It's simply something that will take you down a narrower path and constrain your programming. I'm not talking about knowing the details of algorithm X, or how to implement it from memory. But if you don't know it's existence even, it wont be an algorithm you'll consider when you write your program.

robin_reala 12y ago

I like the fact that the answer to number 1 has changed since 1921.

philwelch 12y ago
How so? Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Andorra, and Monaco bound France and have all done so since before 1921.
- acheron 12y ago
  I don't know if this is what the OP was thinking of, but in the 1950s, Saar bordered it. So it's changed back, but that doesn't mean it hasn't changed.
  - robin_reala 12y ago
    I was actually thinking of the Channel Tunnel :)
- FiatLuxDave 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Algeria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Algeria
- Pinckney 12y ago
  Brazil and Suriname, since 1946.

VLM 12y ago

They strike me as interview discussion questions not simple memorization. Take the numerous distance calculations. Great circle? Theoretical tunnel thru the earth? Traditional maritime shipping routes or aircraft navigation routes which take into account prevailing winds and international boundaries etc? Oh so you produced a number which happens to be correct, here is a slide rule and the geographic coordinates I used, you can demonstrate spherical geometry to me now. Perhaps some ageism was involved although hard to tell if it was enforced to eliminate old people or young people, such as "deepest depth of the ocean". Data points that have stabilized in recent decades were not stable a century ago. How deep you think the ocean is depends a lot on when you learned how deep the ocean is, at least back then. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench

skywhopper 12y ago

For what it's worth, some actual intelligence tests from the period were remarkably similar, if a little easier. For example this group of (supposedly) actual questions from an Army IQ test ca WWI: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5293 http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5293

thearn4 12y ago
Interesting, it's basically trivia instead of an aptitude test. The ASVAB is certainly an improvement.

jpwagner 12y ago

Certainly it paints a picture of what was considered common knowledge and what was learned in schools at that time. Another thought is that there are a couple of different types of memorization going on here. For example no one memorizes a list of bordering states/countries; answers to those questions would indicate the strength of photographic memory.

TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
I doubt most of these facts were taught in schools - which is probably the point. Finding answers to questions like these was difficult pre-Internet. You'd only have a chance of getting them right if you read very widely all the time, and remembered most of what you read. If I was competing with Edison and I genuinely thought his employees were able to ace that test, I'd be seriously worried, trivia or no. In reality they probably couldn't. Only a very tiny percentage of the population is going to have the wide interests and the eidetic recall needed to ace this list.

mrcactu5 12y ago

incidentally, I think Edison's test is trying to measure curiosity This test is ahead of its time and it is perfectly consistent with what we understand about Thomas Edison. I doubt anyone memorized the answers to this test - he is looking for signs of creativity. Edison's formula: Invention is going to come from trying 99 dead ends to find the 1% that works.

hackuser 12y ago

> I think Edison's test is trying to measure curiosity. He is measuring raw ability to recall. He explains it here: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9906E4D8133EEE3ABC4B51DFB667838A639EDE http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9906E4D813...