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> Outside of the interview context, I haven't balanced a red-black tree since I was in undergrad over 15 years ago.

Which company asked you to balance a red-black tree in an interview context? Name-and-shame them. Seriously. I've heard many whiteboard interview polemicists use this example, but have never seen any evidence for it actually happening.

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In the programmingzen blog, Antonio Cangiano, a ruby programmer and author of several ruby books, there is a post about an interview for a job at IBM in which the question is to explain how the red-black tree algorithm works.

Hey, I googled for it, here it is: http://programmingzen.com/things-ive-learned-from-hiring-int...

Your comment:

> the question is to explain how the red-black tree algorithm works.

From your link:

> Sample questions included: What’s a Red-Black Tree and what would you use it for?

I don't see how those are equivalent.

I also don't see how the latter two questions are equivalent to asking an interviewee to "balance a red-black tree".

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