A question asked in a job interview a friend of mine had today:
What digit does 230 begin with?
A quick poll of people at work suggested this was an unfair question to ask in an interview. Apparently either you are a complete maths nerdy who knows the answer straight away or else you won't know.
Well I don't think that's the case at all. I reckon the interviewers were asking the question to see how well you could think through a problem and come up with workable solutions, rather than testing any sort of mathematical knowledge you might have. Personally I'd have answered it along the lines of "Hmmm good question. I'm not entirely sure but some ideas for finding out include...". So let's have a quick 30 second brainstorm and come up with some suggestions:
- Use a calculator to find out (engineer's reply)
- Let's look at powers of 2 that we can quickly find, see what distribution the initial digit follows and extrapolate from there (statistician's reply)
- Well, 210 is 1024 which is close to 1,000 so in all likelihood if you multiply this by itself a few timesto get 230 this will also begin with 1 (mathematician's reply)
- Benfords law suggests it's most likely to be 1 (clevertrousers reply)
Bet I'd've got the job.
