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No mention of where we're getting the water from in the puzzle?
I'd go down to the nearest shop and ask whether they can fill me 4 gallons of water in the 5 gallon bottle
(isn't 5 gallon rather a lot of water to be playing around with?? I thought it was 5 litres in DH3)
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Alternatively, fill the 5 gallon jug. We then have 4 gallons of water in there, with 1 remainder.
(How many months have 28 days? All of them.) type thing...
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Let's hope the Senior Programmer is a benevolent dictator.
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Exactly, that and nobody drives my fucking car!!!
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Time to clean the coffee off the monitor again!!!
Gold!!
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"Hahaha...I thought this cigar was in my other coat.....Wait a minnute, this is my other coat!!"
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That's because a litre is less than a liter.
Please use US metric units, thank you.
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Good to know I'm not the only assembly programmer in here...
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Not the way it's stated in the article. Given that they're quite explicit about what there isn't (no scale, no dividing line....) we can assume we have other things at our disposal (such as the fish tank). This is part of the reason why such puzzles are a bad idea (if the interviewer wants a specific answer), they need to be explicit about exactly what you can and can't do. OTOH, I think allowing people to be creative and make their own assumptions gives a good indication of the way they think, and can give more valuable feedback than simply requiring that an answer is correct (this is a major failing in the way we teach math at the moment too, BTW - google "Mathematicians Apology" for an interesting article).
The result, though necessary is not necessarily as important as the process...
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And you would then have 4 litres of water. That's a little less than you need, I think?
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I'd go your mother's house and get them.
I don't care if I didn't get the job, it'd be worth it just to use that line in an interview.
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It depends where the fuel goes and how much there is.
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Phone a friend
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Perfectly said!
I hate "brain teasers" and logic puzzles. I am absolutely terrible at them. They make my brain hurt. Yet I am an excellent software engineer. I can design and implement very complex software systems with ease. The logic and experience required for software engineering bear no relationship to those god-awful brain teasers. Interviewers and particularly HR personnel interviewers, have no clue what they're doing when they use those puzzles as an interviewing tool.
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I fill the 5 gallon container. I drink one gallon. 4 gallons left.
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OK, the 747 sinks, now what?
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But what if the 4 gallons has to end up in the THREE gallon container!? Now THERE's a puzzle!
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Wow, poor guy. The carpal tunnel was so bad he had to chop off his hand!
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I'd just drive it to a weighbridge, myself.
As for the water problem, I can think of two ways of doing it.
Then make a small hole near the top of whichever bottle isn't sitting in a pool of water, taking care that any debris falls on the scale. Wait for the water to stop running out and dry that side of the scales off. Repeat until the scales balance. You now have four gallons of water split between the two bottles, and you may or may not have a usable five gallon bottle to put them in.
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'Reply' = there will be a little thing in top right corner that says 'In reply to <link>'
'Quote' = 'Reply' + include OP's post
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Ok, that sounds right. I remember them rushing all around the city solving stupid puzzles. The bad guy must have been an HR person.
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It wouldn't matter if the 3 gallon one was full or filled in the process (although you might find a little is wasted as you remove it)
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Ummm, kilogram is a measure of mass, not weight. Right? So it wouldn't matter what planet you're on, or even that you're on a planet.
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Die Hard 3, actually. With Bruce Willis (of course) and Samuel L. Jackson.
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It depends on how you use them. If you give a "brain teaser" and expect the interviewee to come back with the right answer and if they don't you take that as a mark against them, then that is, frankly, retarded. If on the other hand, you give the "brain teaser" as a chance to see how the person thinks, see how they respond to an abstract problem, see what questions they ask. Then I think it's a valid thing to do. Take some of the non-answers on this thread. Some, I think, are good and show real intellect. Some are deliberately obtuse attempts to cheat and redefine the problem or else be a smart ass. I think the weight the jumbo jet problems actually might be better. Since you probably don't have the real answer, the question is more about the process and you should probably have multiple answers from a good candidate.
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Done.
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White guy and a black guy, makes sense. Oddly enough according to imdb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112864/trivia) Die Hard: With a Vengeance was originally consider as a sequel to Lethal Weapon.
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Isn't that how they lost a Mars probe?
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The bit in bold is exactly the problem. Too many people implement overly complex solutions (admittedly with ease). Some of the discussion seen here on the water problem illustrates that there can be more than 1 approach to a solution. Jumping headfirst into the most complex is not necessarily a good thing.
That said, I agree, for the most part brain teasers are a crock because they put someone who has come across them before at an advantage (not to mention, someone who has come across them before probably enjoys them and so does them all the time). Similarly, someone who often sits IQ tests will appear to have a higher IQ than someone sitting one for the first time. Neither is a measure of your ability to think...
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Isn't Hitler dead already?
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I thought it was Die Hard 3 (Die Hard with a Vegetable)
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It's obvious noone here likes salesmen..... I would've thought the most obvious would be:
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So is it only me or the first-guess answer is:(#1=3 gallons #2 = 5 gallons) fill #2 pour #2 to #1 until it is full 2 gallons left in #2, note the water leve(or hold your finger there, make a mark, whatever) empty #1 pour all #2 to #1 fill #2 up to the mark(2 gallons) pour #1 in #2
Odd shaped container does not prevent you from marking water level.
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Duh
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The comments on this article have convinced me that it's easier to complain than do anything, even solve an incredibly easy mental puzzle.
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