How do you answer questions in interviews for which you think, they are senseless? [closed]

Question

I am mentioning a few questions which are usually the part of interviews, I dont understand what is the intent behind then. Of course one might argue, just to see how you think, or how you react, but isn't it better if you ask a more meaningful puzzle, at least for which you can be sure of answer, or justify unanimously. For example, see this bulb puzzle:

a meaningful puzzle: a closed room has three lightbulbs, and outside the room you have 3 switches, one for each bulb, but you do not know which switch is for which bulb. Find out which one is for which, you cannot open the door, only once when you have the answer.

Well, the crown jewels according to me in the category of meaningless are:

• A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?
• How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?
• You have to get from point A to point B. You don’t know if you can get there. What would you do?
• How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?
• You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?

What is best strategy to answer in such cases?

Addendum -- An excerpt from Nikesh Arora's (President, Global Sales Operations and Business Development for Google Inc.) interview --

" I was travelling with Larry, on a plane on a clear day, and looking at the landmass below he was calculating how long it would a fleet of cars to map every mile of every road in the US -- perhaps 500 cars in sex months or thousand cars in the 3 months? Thats how his mind works. thats's how Google Street View was born..."

I am sure i would have turned down a thought like that. s hit me!!!

Answer 1

Some of your "meaningless questions" are actually known as Fermi Problems, and can not only be fun, but show that you can derive an accurate estimate quickly using known quantities.

http://www.vendian.org/envelope/dir0/fermi_questions.html

Answer 2

Those meaning less questions are towards making you ask the right things to get towards a solution. There is such a thing as an incomplete problem-statement. If you cannot cross the primary hurdle of asking the correct questions that will complete the problem definition, you cannot even start towards the solution.

Many problems (like the 3-switch example here) appear very interesting and analytical to your mind.
That is because it has grasped almost all the necessary parameters of the problem.
But, what happens when you see an incompletely defined problem, do you just move ahead -- next-question-please -- or, do you dwell into it to probe those parts which if you knew, would help you figure out what is to be solved.

To take an example -- estimating number of piano tuners, is a classic Fermi problem

Fermi was known for his ability to make good approximate calculations with little or no actual data, hence the name. One well-documented example is his estimate of the strength of the atomic bomb detonated at the Trinity test, based on the distance traveled by pieces of paper dropped from his hand during the blast.1 Fermi's estimate of 10 kilotons of TNT was remarkably close to the now-accepted value of around 20 kilotons.

The classic Fermi problem, generally attributed to Fermi,2 is "How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?" A typical solution to this problem would involve multiplying together a series of estimates that would yield the correct answer if the estimates were correct.

Having said all this, I do agree that there will be interviewers who ask such questions from popular interview guide books without understanding any basis for them. To that extent, it might be better to leave such things out of an interview.

---

Here is Jeff's take on The Hardest Interview Puzzle Question Ever.
And, don't miss his back reference On Interviewing Programmers there.

Hiring is difficult under the best of conditions. But an interview process that relies too heavily on puzzle questions is risky. Sure, you may end up with programmers who can solve (or memorize, I guess) the absolute gnarliest puzzle questions you throw at them. But isn't effectively communicating those solutions to the rest of the team important, too? For many programmers, that's the hardest part of the puzzle.

Answer 3

The best strategy is to ask questions if you don't understand what the question means, and explain in detail your thought process. This is exactly what the interviewer is looking for. It usually doesn't even matter if you get the right answer on this type of question, as long as you come up with a reasonable answer and a solid problem-solving thought process.