Lovefilm, yes or no?

[Nicholas Clark]

On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 02:05:51PM +0100, Peter Edwards wrote:

> Funniest interview question I heard of recently (not Lovefilm) was:
> "What's two to the power 14"
> As in, work out the answer there and then, not type in  perl -e 'print
> 2**14, "\n"'  as eny fule kno

16384

(I admit that I did check that I can remember it correctly.)


I'm starting to think that that's actually quite a good question really.

Either they get it wrong
Or they get it right, but use paper to work it out
Or they get it right in their head

and even for the third case, how fast they answer is useful.
Did they just know it? Did they start from 65536 and halve twice?
Or did it take more mental arithmetic than that.


(Among other things, it's the address of the first byte of RAM on a ZX
Spectrum)

Nicholas Clark