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Comment by proksoup | Hacker News Reader

"How would you estimate the number of cars sold in a year?"

This boggles my mind. Where? For what purpose? Is the expectation that the candidate googles that question?

I would google lots of different things until I found some answers (car manufacturers sales reports from car magazines, news articles that may have the answer, literally for the phrase "number of cars sold in a year" etc, etc).

If you want me to talk through it, it's just mind numbing making asinine assumptions. Market sizing? Obvious assumptions? What?

I can't understand how anyone can say with a straight face that that question is straight forward and not ambiguous.

The ambiguity is what makes these google interview questions brain teasers, to me at least.

But that's probably the last item in a list of reasons why Google wouldn't hire me :)

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Ambiguity is something a programmer needs to deal with at work. Riddles are not. Open ended questions are exactly what you want to use to evaluate someone. Riddles fail because there is an expected answer, not because the form of the question is ambiguous.

Some coding questions as asked in interviews are actually riddles in practice because the interviewer is unskilled. Those 'coding questions' are worse than the obviously bad riddles because it is harder to tell that the feedback is slanted.

The purpose is to see how you break down the problem. It's all about applying MECE (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) methodology.

Usually for this type of questions you don't really even need to say the numbers, just clearly outline your though process.

The ambiguity is what makes it relevant to search.

What does a user mean if they enter [how many cars sold in a year?]

The ambiguity shows that the specific answer is less interesting than showing your working; having the discussion about how to get an answer.

That's more what I was hoping for, thanks :)

I wonder what internal Google has explored along the lines of prompting the user with clarifying questions. Like Google Suggest and Spell Check exhibit the level of intelligence needed I think.

It's okay that it's ambiguous. You can ask questions, like whether or not they're including motorcycles and buses.

The point is not to get the right answer. It's to deduce a reasonable answer that's in the right ballpark.

Consider the Google engineer who implemented the OneBox feature that answers "how many cars are sold in a year?"

How did he do it?

Consider the Wolfram Alpha engieer who implemented the same feature.

How did she do it?

(It becomes an interesting question, eh?)

But they didn't? Google doesnt answer it remotely close to what I find by searching deeper with each.

It's so ambiguous at the google search engine can't answer it.

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