Re: what is the url where you can get the microsoft interviewquestions

Joachim Feise (jfeise@ics.uci.edu)
Fri, 24 Sep 1999 17:42:57 -0700


Gregory Alan Bolcer wrote:
[snip]
>
> Also, if you go back for a second interview, if they asked you the mirror
> question and you didn't get it, they'll probably ask you a theory question next.
> In fact, I am positive they'll ask you the following. I've included the
> question and the answer below. If you get this one, then they typically will

Actually, they seem to have changed the topic a bit. The theory is the same, though.
My source tell me that the story now goes like this:
There are 50 married couples, and each woman knows when another woman's husband has been unfaithful
but never when her own husband has. The statutes of the village require that if a woman can prove
that her husband has been unfaithful, she must kill him that very day. As it happens, all 50 of the
men have been unfaithful. Even though all the women are statute-abiding and rational, nothing
happens until the tribal matriarch visits and says that there is at least one philandering husband
in the village. Nothing happens for 49 days, but on the 50th day, after a process of simultaneous
"meta-reasoning," there is a bloodbath, and all the husbands are slaughtered.

This apparently comes out of the book "Once Upon a Number", by John Allen Paulos
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465051588/ref=ed_oe_h/002-5344011-7894257)

You actually get this question even if you are about to have a PhD.

-Joe

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