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Google's Math Puzzle
An anonymous reader writes "Commuters in Cambridge, Mass., are scratching their heads over signs challenging passers-by to solve a complicated math problem. The mysterious banners are actually a job-recruiting pitch from Google."
NPR is clueless. That's why I am the one getting hired by Reebok! The URL was really 1828675309.com and let you to an OGG of Blink182 singing the standard Reebok commercial. At the end you were asked to go down to Foot Locker and buy a specific pair of shoes. On the bottom of the shoe was a keypad. Once you dialed 1829675309 you were connected with a Reebok HR rep and giving a job at a local Foot Locker.
Job as a Google engineer, sheesh. What a load of crap! Would you like whitener or a pair of extra soft socks with your shoes? Perhaps a Nuggets jersey?
about 20 mins worth of programming, and i'm not that smart. it ends up taking you to this page.
Monday, July 12, 2004 Warning: We Brake For Number Theory
If any Silicon Valley drivers have found that traffic is moving more slowly than usual these days on the southbound 101 right around Ralston, you may have us to blame. Last week we unveiled a billboard that's a bit unusual in that it promotes Google only to one very narrow constituency: engineers who are geeky enough to be annoyed at the very existence of a math problem they haven't solved, and smart enough to rectify the situation.
Google Billboard
In other words, the billboard (which offers problem-solvers the URL to, sorry, a page containing an even harder problem), is a recruiting campaign. We've always worked hard to hire the smartest engineers we can find, and we thought this would be a cool way to find a few more. Perhaps including you. If you're a math or computer whiz who doesn't happen to live within shouting distance of Palo Alto -- good luck, and we're looking forward to hearing from you.
- A. Googler
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
This is at least the second time google has done this. The first was on a billboard along US 101 in Silicon valley. /. may have covered it then, but I can't find the article so here is one from news.com (note that the caption to the picture if you read the NPR article also references the same billboard.)
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
I spent two days on the second puzzle (the number from e just leads you to a site with the real puzzle), only to realize that the answer was far, far simpler than I had been looking for. I think buildings two blocks down heard the "Doh!" ;-)
A hint for those who want it...
If you're searching through all of your number theory memories and reference texts for a solution, you've left the solution far behind.
...you could just google for the answer:
7427466391
Now, is that a better or worse answer than figuring it out yourself?
Beep beep.
The URL was really 1828675309.com
That's not resolving and I think I know why...
Jenny, I got your number
I need to make you mine
Jenny, don't change your number
8675309 (8675309)
8675309 (8675309)
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I'm lazy, so I just Googled the answer.
In case you're wondering -- or forgot -- e is the base of the natural system of logarithms, having a numerical value of about 2.71828 (though the number goes on forever).
Get file with copy of prime numbers. Get file with copy of largest precision of e. Use perl to scan for all 10 digit primes and then look for the first one in e.
Profit
or am I missing something?
---
We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience
Personally, I like this approach. Maybe the problem isn't extraordinarily difficult to solve, but the ad itself has a useful purpose for Google's HR department: it finds people who are willing to solve a problem whose solution is not immediately obvious without any immediate gain, other than satisfying their curiosity. That has to be a nice plus for Google. They can limit their hiring process to those individuals and from there give them more challenging problems, take them through the interview process, etc.
Live free or die
Remember kids, you don't have to KNOW anything any more. This is the age of the search engine.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Use Google to find the solution to Google's puzzle.
Guess they just want people who know how to use a search engine. :)
...and it just displays some guy's resume. Maybe 42 isn't the answer after all!
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
I won't post the URL, but here's what it says in case you want a jump on the second question;
Unfortunatley, the fun ends here. When you enter the correct password, you are taken to google lab's hiring page which I presume is accessible without jumping through hoops.
..mork
I saw this on Google Blog a few weeks ago and decided to try it out. Like nearly every problem I encounter, I also check Google for a solution and came up with it right quick. So I'm a little surprised it took so long to make it onto Slashdot.
Anyway, I guess I wasn't paying that close of attention during the IPO thing -
From the Wikipedia article: "In the IPO filing for Google, Inc., in 2004, rather than a typical round-number amount of money, the company announced its intention to raise $2,718,281,828, which is, of course, e billion dollars to the nearest integer."
I presume that would work for billboards where 'Google' is prominently displayed somewhere on the billboard. From the images I have seen of the billboards, it ain't there.
Given a Billboard where the only content is a text string '{first 10 digit prime in e}.com' there are three ways to find out that it is a 'google' ad.
1. Solve the puzzle.
2. Bribe the billboard owner. (surely you have seen this billboard advertizing itsel out at one time or another.)
3. Wait till the news breaks that it is a Google Job offer.
Something tells me that Google is more interested in people who quickly solve #1, vs people who can handle #2, or wait for #3.
-Rusty
You never know...
Even easier... http://www.google.com/jobs/ Worked for me. I got through two interviews on the phone before being kicked out.
In the latest issue Dr. Dobbs (you get a free subscription if you attend LinuxWorldConf), they had a pullout job application. It was in the style of an SAT test and was filled with such "oh we're so smart and clever and funny and funky funky fresh" questions such as "write a haiku on database caching" and "the box below is empty. fill it with something" and other questions where any of the questions could be considered correct.
It was really annoying. It didn't make me want to work there at all. It was like a "oh we're so smart mensa+masturbating club".
Answer to 2nd puzzle is @ http://www.mkaz.com/math/google/.......
Does Google not realize what these billboards are going to do? Think of the poor embattled commuters sitting in suburban to urban traffic clog.
Honking at each other.
Bitching on their cell phones about their wives while pissing off the person(s) behind them who are also on their cell phones bitching about the guy that is jabbering on his phone and not moving forward with traffic.
Bumping each other and causing just enough damage to their cars to NOT really want to risk an insurance claim but also enough to want to get it fixed before the neighbors think they drive a shitty car.
Flipping over and killing each other because one of them thought that he/she had to get to work about 30mph faster than everyone else, because that one person has a much busier day of meetings than everyone else on the highway.
Enter Google -- further frustrating drivers with friggin' math problems on billboards. What? You don't think people will look at them enough to be distracted and frustrated at learning that they're not really Google material?
I call bullshit. 'cause that bitch on the uncontested divorce for $299 billboard torments me every day. Not because I don't like my marriage or want a divorce. No -- she begs the question -- "Can you beat me in court if you want the dog and the 50" plasma TV? Eh, buddy?"
Fuck you lady. Fuck you and your uncontested divorce. And fuck Google for teasing me with a job that I probably will have never known existed if it weren't for people that are actually qualified to answer the math problem having posted the g'damned answers here and made feel stupid as shit.
I'd complain more, but this guy behind me in his gas guzzling SUV is honking at me to move forward one car length while we drive past an accident. Thank god for WiFi in the car. If he honks again, I'm threatening him with the Airsoft 9mm I have in the glove compartment.
IronChefMorimoto
First, find the first 1, 3, 7, or 9 after the first ten digits after the decimal. Take the preceding 9 digits, and run it through a Prime Number Checker. (The algorithm is in the source).
Really, the hardest part is determining the farthest decimal points of e. Here's the formula: limn->infinity (1 + 1/n)n.
It's lazy, impatient, and full of hubris! BTW, I get a finder's fee.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
1. Sue IBM
2. ???
3. Profit!
If you have the answer to #2, please contact Darl McBride at SCO.com. We have an immediate opening for someone who can solve this riddle.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
That's just kind of clever thinking we're looking for. How does a corner office and $150K/year sound?
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
A few sample questions from it:
#2 Write a haiku describing possible methods for predicting search traffic seasonality.
#4 You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. There is a dusty laptop here with a weak wireless connection. There are dull, lifeless gnomes strolling about. What dost thou do?
A) Wander aimlessly, bumping into obstacles until you are eaten by a grue.
B) Use the laptop as a digging device to tunnel to the next level.
C) Play MPoRPG until the battery dies along with your hopes.
D) Use the computer to map the nodes of the maze and discover an exit path.
E) Email your resume to Google, tell the lead gnome you quit and find yourself in a whole different world.
#9 This space left intentionally blank. Please fill it with something that improves upon emptiness.
#17 Consider a function which, for a given whole number n, returns the number of ones required when writing out all numbers between 0 and n. For example, f(13)=6. Notice that f(1)=1. What is the next largest n such that f(n)=n?
#20 What number comes next in the sequence: 10, 9, 60, 90, 70, 66, ?
A) 96
B) 1 followed by 100 zeros ( a Googol )
C) Either of the above
D) None of the above
#21 In 29 words or fewer, describe what you would strive to accomplish if you worked at Google Labs.
I wrote this in a few minutes in Mathematica, and found the answer to the first puzzle. The second puzzle was annoying so I just searched google for it instead.
en = N[\[ExponentialE], 1000]; Table[x = (Floor[en*(10^k)*10^10] - Floor[en*(
10^k)]*10^10); If[PrimeQ[x], {k, x}, {k, 0}], {k, 0, 100}]
All is Number -Pythagoras.
He's wrong anyway. Just because any number is a possibility doesn't mean it's the one they're looking for. You have to find a pattern. In this case, the pattern is f(n) = the nth 10-digit block of the digits of e whose digits add up to 49. f(5) is 5966290435. The linux.org login no longer works. And of course, I figured all that out with Google.
111-1111... Lois? Damn! 111-1112... Lois? Damn!
I think you, and the thread stretching out from your post, are missing the point. The point is not the with polynomial interpolation, gowen can get "the answer". His point is that you can reasonably get any answer.
The set of functions is uncountably infinite. There are uncountably infinite functions that have f of 1, 2, 3, and 4 set to the values Google gave. The reality is that mathematically speaking, giving four numbers results in exactly no constraint on the next number; you might as well just pick one at random. "Polynomial interpolation" is one reasonable path to this, but remember that functions need not even be continuous and are ultimately just infinite look-up tables. (Note the final "solution" is just a lookup table-type function.)
To counter the obvious next objection ("well obviously it is going to be a human-meaningful number"), I take my objection one meta. Obviously we're not truly drawing from that infinite set of functions. However, there's still an effectively infinite set of "human meaningful functions", too. So the true challenge becomes not a math problem, but in sheer guessing which exact constraints the puzzle writer chose.
This is not a mathematical problem. It tries to pretend to be one, but it is not. Generally, once you know the constraints the solution is trivial.
The correct mathematical answer to all such sequences remains "The next number is whatever the hell it feels like being". I have better things to do with my time then try to second-guess somebody pretending to be clever and plucking some random thing out of the uncountably infinite set and demanding that I guess it. Thus, I don't do these puzzles; they're sophmoric in the literal sense of the term, created by people who think they are clever but don't seem to have a deep understanding of math.
People who "solve" the puzzle may impress Google, but I am not impressed by Google using this as a puzzle.
And here's why: The people who did the hard math to solve the problem--hey, they'll make great coders, welcome aboard.
/. article successfully got other people to do the work for us, and then took credit for it.
Those of us who googled it or read the
Welcome aboard, manager!
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.