A site for technical interview questions, brain teasers, puzzles, quizzles (whatever the heck those are) and other things that make you think!
A man needs to go through a train tunnel. He starts through the tunnel and when he gets 1/4 the way through the tunnel, he hears the train whistle behind him. you don’t know how far away the train is, or how fast it is going, (or how fast he is going). All you know is:
if the probability of observing a car in 20 minutes on a highway is 609/625, what is the probability of observing a car in 5 minutes (assuming constant default probability)?
I haven’t written up a solution for this yet, but smarter people than I have described some on the discussion forum.
The warden meets with 23 new prisoners when they arrive. He tells them, “You may meet today and plan a strategy. But after today, you will be in isolated cells and will have no communication with one another.
“In the prison is a switch room, which contains two light switches labeled A and B, each of which can be in either the ‘on’ or the ‘off’ position. I am not telling you their present positions. The switches are not connected to anything.
Five pirates discover a chest full of 100 gold coins. The pirates are ranked by their years of service, Pirate 5 having five years of service, Pirate 4 four years, and so on down to Pirate 1 with only one year of deck scrubbing under his belt. To divide up the loot, they agree on the following:
Two MIT math grads bump into each other while shopping at Fry’s. They haven’t seen each other in over 20 years.
First grad to the second: “How have you been?”
Second: “Great! I got married and I have three daughters now.”
First: “Really? How old are they?”
Second: “Well, the product of their ages is 72, and the sum of their ages is the same as the number on that building over there…”
First: “Right, ok… Oh wait… Hmm, I still don’t know.”
Second: “Oh sorry, the oldest one just started to play the piano.”
First: “Wonderful! My oldest is the same age!”
Four people need to cross a rickety rope bridge to get back to their camp at night. Unfortunately, they only have one flashlight and it only has enough light left for seventeen minutes. The bridge is too dangerous to cross without a flashlight, and it’s only strong enough to support two people at any given time.