From Google's Interview

Question posted on 06 2010
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How many golf balls fit in a school bus?
 
 
7 Answers
 
An average non-mathematical person would say, "I dunno, a million?"

A narrow-thinking engineer answer would start calculating the volume of a golf ball (a sphere 1.68 inches in diameter), the approximate volume of the interior of a school bus (35 feet long, 8 feet wide, 6 feet high), and make a rough estimate of somewhere around 600,000.

An engineer with a little more savvy would ask, "How are the golf balls packed?" "What kind of school bus is it? Does it go to the 'special' school?" Or maybe, "How many students are already on the bus, and how many of them are carrying French horns?" (Disclaimer: I had to carry a French horn to school on the bus during junior high school, and nothing makes you a school bus don't-sit-next-to-me pariah like a French horn.)

The smart-aleck answer to this is, "all of them, if you carry them on one at a time". I actually like that answer; it points out the ambiguity in the question.

The point of this question is this: there are multiple interpretations to the question, and there are many parameters that have not been explicitly spelled out. If you answer the question quickly, without getting all the facts, you are not thinking critically.

06/14/2010
 
 
If you put all the golf balls in the world in to an incinerator...also would like to know if they're regulation golf balls or the european sized ones, which are smaller!

06/15/2010
 
 
3000000 OR MORE

06/15/2010
 
 
The answer is "Who cares?"

06/23/2010
 
 
I told my kids we'd play after I found what I neeedd. Damnit.

01/01/2012
 
 
not sure how the engineer got it right as [48 m3 (bus volume)] / [golf ball volume =4/3*(3.14)*(2cm)] is = ± 1.2 Million balls ....

01/28/2012
 
 
^3 off course

01/28/2012
 
 
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