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Australian Air Force's Recruiting Puzzle Shown To Be Unsolvable
KernelMuncher writes "Australia's Royal Air Force has been left red-faced after a job ad asked applicants to solve a complex math problem that was revealed to be unsolvable. The service posted the puzzle in a bid to attract the country's best minds to its ranks. 'If you have what it takes to be an engineer in the Air Force call the number below,' it read, above a complicated formula which candidates had to crack. But there was a slight difficulty: The problem had typos and ended up not giving potential operatives the correct contact information."
Maybe its a test of character?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
It's the Kobayashi Maru!
When people pointed out two key typos, the military bosses thanked them and said they were 'exactly the kind of people they are looking for.'
"Eh, sarge, I think this war is a mistake..."
My AP Statistics teacher used to say the best part about advanced math equations is that you can say (and prove!) there isn't an answer.
...and contact us at our secret phone number, we *really* want you.
The specs clearly specified the correct LaTEX version, but instead somebody put it up in PowerPoint.
My guess is they will find good people for less cost than the government program/s.
Several potential recruits complained after getting error messages from the Wolfram web page that reduces integrals.
Your problem may be solved by means of a most ingenious proof I have, which the margin of your ad is too small to contain.
I have to go lie down now, I'm not feeling well.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
You find out that they are mistaken. So, you don't solve it, do a fake solving, or report them that they made a mistake? Considering how they approach to vulnerability reports the last option could get you in prison, while the problem will still have the same mistake.
...for people who can bullshit their way thru impossible circumstances, and are trying to seek out whoever is the most convincing bullshitters.
It was solvable, just the solution wasn't the intended phone number.
You see? There's no qualified candidates domestically. This is why we need more H1b visas, to hire the only qualified indentured servants...I mean employees available that we gave the phone number to.
Yes, I know it's Australia, not the US.
WTF does Australia do with its Air Force anyway? They're hopefully not teaching algebra.
"If you have what it takes..." ... i'll go into the private sector, pay is better, far less assholes that i have to salute and nearly zero chance of beeing shot at in my job.
What's the physical exam - jumping through a hoop the size of a doughnut?
"We hope you still enjoy the inherent fun of blindly serving a misguided master. This is just the type of person we're looking for"
... the only winning move is not to play.
You just need a cocky young man that can reprogram the test and then casually win the test while eating an apple.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
Typos in the problem aside, most engineers I know wouldn't have either the inclination or ability solve that kind of problem. The reactions to it would vary from x "I forgot that shit as soon as I graduated".to a full blown "wtf".
And between both my wifes job and my own, we actually know actually quite a lot of engineers.
That is clearly a problem for mathematicians, not engineers.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Reminds me of the time I applied for a job at Paychex (a payroll company in the States). Their accounting test had an order of operations error.
They wanted to see who was smart enough to figure out that there was no solution, AND had the balls to say so in an interview.
I simply can't type more than that for my comment.
[nt]
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
And in particular people that know the limits of their own skill. Dunning-Kruger effect at work. People that know the limits of their own skill get help when faced with something beyond them. People that do not know these limits mess it up.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The solution to the problem was, that it wasn't solvable. It may not have been their intent, but there is no difference in getting the correct answer as "problem X results in 3" or in the correct answer "problem Y has no result". They didn't want to have people to solve one specific problem but people who solve problems. So - where is the problem?
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:-> Maybe they were just trying to facebook comment bait. You know, like those "95% of people get this wrong." posts, lol.
I is answerred ad in paper to join airforce. They made me direcotr of advertissment! They sed I had right stuff!
They were looking for someone with enough common sense to not bother solving it and just look up the recruiter's number in the phone book or on the web.
This is what happens when you have engineers attempting calculus without mathematicians around.
Eat sleep die
No wonder I kept getting a Chinese take out joint.
and yet thousands risk their lives in leaky boats just to reach our shores to be oppressed!
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
[citation needed]
null
IANA Mathematician, but all those big hairy equations just look like code to me. Doesn't "solve" just mean "to compute", i.e., you read the symbols, do what they tell you, wash, rinse, repeat? If I gave someone a function that executed some huge, gnarly block of code and then asked them to tell me what it would return, what would that really tell me? That they know how to read? Third graders know how to read.
And what kind of person, exactly, would such a test attract? Puzzle-solvers, people in love with unnecessarily complex, convoluted algorithms. The kind of people who would write unnecessarily complex, convoluted algorithms.
No thanks. Give me a Feynman any day.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
We have a HUGE bureaucracy over here. Much of which is visibly, provably incompetent...
There were probably 20+ meetings and 200+ people involved in getting that ad out of the door.
Our tax dollars are well spent, yet again!
Obviously, some of the comments on this, reveal a lack of thought.
Someone is interviewing for a job (in this case, Australia RAF).
The military requires you think in most cases, if you are in charge of something, sometimes there is no 'right' answer, but you have to take the best option.
You have to have the courage and forethought to stand behind your decisions as a leader, everyone will no agree with them, but, in truth in many cases, unless you are there making the decision yourself, all else is simply hindsight from someone who isn't there.
I personally think this was a test to see really if you were the right candidate for the job:
When people pointed out two key typos, the military bosses thanked them and said they were 'exactly the kind of people they are looking for.
These showed, that they knew the 'right' answer and told the testers so, they had the courage and duty to do what must be done.
That is why 'the military bosses thanked them and said they were 'exactly the kind of people they are looking for.'
I suspect if all people could make perfect decisions, there would be no need to find out if they could make a decision at all.
Everything about life is not 'superficial'. Military commanders have to know that those they hire have the backbone.
Not - 'yes men'. Think about all the decisions you make. How many of them are really cut and dried and everybody wins.
I have two nephews who fly for the U.S. Air Force. Hope they never need backup from the Aussies!!!
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
LOL