How to Solve Google’s Crazy Open-Ended Interview Questions

One of the most important tools in critical thinking about numbers is to grant yourself permission to generate wrong answers to mathematical problems you encounter. Deliberately wrong answers!

Engineers and scientists do it all the time, so there’s no reason we shouldn’t all be let in on their little secret: the art of approximating, or the "back of the napkin" calculation. As the British writer Saki wrote, "a little bit of inaccuracy saves a great deal of explanation."

For over a decade, when Google conducted job interviews, they’d ask their applicants questions that have no answers. Google is a company whose very existence depends on innovation–on inventing things that are new and didn’t exist before, and on refining existing ideas and technologies to allow consumers to do things they couldn’t do before.

By Daniel Levitin

Full Story: http://www.wired.com/2014/08/how-to-solve-crazy-open-ended-google-interview-questions/