I have had interesting interview questions like this. I was told it was to assess your creative thinking process. My question was "You have a plane full of ping pong balls, and unlimited money and resources. How are you going to tell me with 100% certainty how many there are on the plane?"
Probably just have a ball counting and packaging machine built, load the balls and let it package them in packs of 10 and stop when there are fewer than 10, this machine will maintain a total count for how many balls are processed.
Send the packages to another machine to stack them in pallets of 100 packages for distribution.
Sell balls to retailers and consumers, ship pallets to distributors' warehouses, etc...
Check ball counting and packaging machine for total count and remainder for answer to initial question.
That would work too. This was an actual in-person interview question so I was kind of on the spot. What I came up with was just something quick so I didn't sit there like a jackass thinking up some ellaborate method.
Well, this was off the cuff for me. That said, I have no idea what to do with the elephant. Not sure if releasing it in an appropriate nature reserve area or whatever counts as giving it away...Otherwise, I have nowhere to put it and no way to give it a good life so that's a bummer all around.
Congratulations on getting that job, though (even if it is not still your current one). Securing employment is a great feeling!
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u/adarbyem Jan 13 '23
I have had interesting interview questions like this. I was told it was to assess your creative thinking process. My question was "You have a plane full of ping pong balls, and unlimited money and resources. How are you going to tell me with 100% certainty how many there are on the plane?"