Friday, February 18, 2011

Feynman's answers to Lateral Thinking puzzles

Late physicist Richard P. Feynman was well known for answering questions in a typical manner unique to him. Here are a few humorous takes on what he would have replied to the so called "lateral thinking" questions that are asked routinely at software company interviews these days.

Here are two examples of the quirky answers that he might have given to these trick questions:
What is amusing is that all the answers are all valid but differs from what the interviewer wants to hear. So the interviewer can neither refute the answers nor be satisfied by them.

A reader gave me this link in which Feynman is answering the question "Why do magnets attract or repel each other?". This is also a classic example of the fact that any fool can ask questions which the wisest man cannot answer.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing these humorous links Bigyan. See this link... http://www.wimp.com/feynmanterms/
    Feynmann talks about how difficult it can be to answer certain questions in layman's terms.

    ReplyDelete
  2. @doodlesandmusings Thanks for the link. I have added the same to my blog.

    ReplyDelete

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