Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Friday, May 28. 2010

"Hardest exam in the world" is scrapped

At Oxford.


Maybe. I think the hardest exam in the world is working a job and keeping a job, but my pup says the hardest exams in the world are the (paperless) rapid-fire interviews at big NYC banks. "What's 18X17?" "What's the square root of 289?" "What's the annualized rate of whatever?" And the damn logic puzzles she told me about, which I have now forgotten. What's the one where they pour the salt and the pepper onto the table, and ask you to quickly separate the salt from the pepper?


Oh, now I remember that one...

Posted by Bird Dog in Education, Our Essays at 13:50 | Comments (9) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Make a little pouch in the tablecloth containing the salt/pepper, and pour a glass of water through it.
#1 KBK on 2010-05-28 16:31 (Reply)
"I think the hardest exam in the world is-"

this.
#2 Dr. Mercury (Link) on 2010-05-28 18:46 (Reply)
I thought it was Navy SEAL Hell Week. Maybe that's just squid talk.
#3 NJSoldier on 2010-05-28 21:06 (Reply)
Got another mind-bender for you, friends. If "thirty days hath September, April June and November," and all the rest have 31, except for ..." how many months have twenty-eight days?
Answer is at the bottom of this post.

Marianne

Answer: All of them. Hee-hee. Someone else fooled me with this, and now maybe I've fooled some of you.
#4 Marianne Matthews on 2010-05-28 21:30 (Reply)
The answer in the context of the question is February but only in a non leap year. The question clearly implies that it is asking about the total number of days in each month.

If we take "All" as the answer then the question is rubbish as there is no way you can separate the 31 month days from the 30 month days as they all have 30 days.

Hope that makes sense

Reagrds...
Steve
#4.1 Steve on 2010-05-29 06:24 (Reply)
I used to use the salt and pepper trick on potential hire engineers during the interview process. Batted rougly .500 on who did and didn't answer it.

I also used to test their analytical ability to - my favorite was the missing number in the sequence 3 ? 4 1 5 9 2 6 5 3 5.

You would be amazed at how many top ten percent in their class engineers didn't get it.
#5 Tom Francis on 2010-05-28 22:16 (Reply)
I think you can use static electricity to separate the S&P.
#6 Eric (Link) on 2010-05-28 22:45 (Reply)
Landing on an aircraft carrier at night in pitching seas rates right up there with the hardest tests ever. All the factors are tested; analytical , perceptive, and psychomotor skills as well as the ability to control fear in a life threatening situation.

A salute to the SEALs as well. As tough as Hell Week is, it probably pales in comparison to real operational situations they go through that they can't tell you about.

Go NAVY.
#7 vikingTX on 2010-05-29 10:31 (Reply)
Tom,

That was as easy as Pi.
A clever bastard you are...

On the number of days in a month. This shows a tendency toward incomplete problem analysis. The quick answer is not always the right answer. Far too often we identify solutions which are wrong. This occurs because we mis-identify the problem to be solved.

This explains Washington DC pretty completely.
#8 Rob on 2010-05-29 11:26 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.