Worst interview experiences

[Honest_Man#1]

25 minutes ago, mathematics said:

From the first roll, you could achieve an 8 by rolling a two and a six, or a six and a two. So you have two “successes”. You work out the probability by diving the number of successes by the total number of possible outcomes.

Or a 5 and a 3, or a 3 and a 5, or a 4 and a 4. For someone that’s really into mathematics that seems like a basic error.

[Gaz]

54 minutes ago, Shotgun said:

OK, now I'm really confused. 

What kind of fucking abomination is this?

[Jamaldo]

I had a lot of job interviews in 2019 (far too fucking many). 

First one was for an opticians. Perfectly fine set up and people. However I knew I'd fucked it when they asked me what my strengths were and I proceeded to sit in utter silence for about 30-45 seconds. If there was ever a question to fail on spectacularly that was not the one.

Had another for a supermarket where the interview went brilliantly (I'd done the exact role before so it was piss easy). However it was an early morning role and I didn't exactly live near but was hoping to move. Asked me to try and look for a place (which I did) and they would catch up with me in a week or two to see if I was successful. Never heard from them again. It was a good job that I never found a place too.

Also had another where the store manager was one of the co-interviewers. I actually admired her no bullshit, no nonsense persona but perhaps it would be better to not convey that in a interview where you're trying to get people to join your company. 

[BFTD]

11 minutes ago, Gaz said:

What kind of fucking abomination is this?

Are they ordered by modern value?

Last time I was dahn the Old Kent Road it was an absolute shithole, but I understand it's been largely redeveloped. Poor old Vine Street.

[Gaz]

Just now, oaksoft said:

Yes it's 1 in 6.

The n throws to get to 39 has me lost though at the moment but statistics and probability are not my strong areas.

I'm going to take a punt that it's 100%. As n tends to infinity, the probability of landing on any square tends to 1.

[Curmudgeon]

Yes it's 1 in 6.
The n throws to get to 39 has me lost though at the moment but statistics and probability are not my strong areas.

I think I've changed my mind. There's only one 4+4 combination so I'm going for an overall chance of 5 in 36.

Where's mathematics with his answer book when we need him?

[John Lambies Doos]

With 2 6-sided dice there must be 36 combinations. There are 6 ways of rolling an 8 (6+2, 5+3, 4+4)*2. Therefore it's a 1 in 6 (6 in 36) chance , I reckon.

What really threw me was that there are more combinations in a 3×3 rubiks cube than there are grains of sand in the world. Pretty mind-blowing

[Curmudgeon]

I'm sticking with 5 in 36.

To roll a 2 there's 1 combination
3 is 2 combinations
4 is 3
5 is 4
6 is 5
7 is 6
8 is 5
9 is 4
10 is 3
11 is 2
12 is 1

Adds up to 36 combinations which makes sense because for each of the 6 ways that dice A could land there are 6 ways that dice B could land. 6x6 is 36.

I'm away for a lie down and I'm not going to contemplate the second question.

[Gaz]

If we assume two independent dice rolls:

1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 1-5, 1-6
2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4, 2-5, 2-6
3-1, 3-2, 3-3, 3-4, 3-5, 3-6
4-1,  4-2, 4-3, 4-4, 4-5, 4-6
5-1, 5-2, 5-3, 5-4, 5-5, 5-6
6-1, 6-2, 6-3, 6-4, 6-5, 6-6

Probability of rolling an 8 from two dice is 5/36.

[welshbairn]

God decides how the dice roll, everything else is mumbo jumbo, like global warming and dinosaurs.

[Newbornbairn]

Just f**k off. I don't come to P&B to get educated.

[Gaz]

35 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

If that's the general idea then it can't be 100% because when you sum the probabilities of each square you get more than 1.

It would have to be 1/40 for each square (equal probabilities) with a total then of 1.

I think you are correct about taking 'n' to infinity.

The way I read it is if the number of dice rolls, n, is tending to infinity, you're just going to keep circulating the board, therefore the probability of landing on any square is going to approach 1.

[GiGi]

33 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

So are we going with 1/6 and 1/40 ?

Wouldn't back either. Shite odds.

[GiGi]

The last 3 pages of this thread are more awkward than any interview I've had btw.

[Miguel Sanchez]

2 minutes ago, NewBornBairn said:

Just f**k off. I don't come to P&B to get educated.

A video about how to win by cheating at Monopoly has just turned up in my youtube suggestions. Get this chat in the fucking bin.

[Gaz]

23 minutes ago, GiGi said:

The last 3 pages of this thread are more awkward than any interview I've had btw.

^ Has N3 maths

[craigkillie]

1 hour ago, oaksoft said:

Ah shit. That's right! It's 5/36. Trick question by the sounds of it.

ETA. It can't be 5/36 either because if only one 4+4 exists then that reduces the number of possible combinations.

If you are right about 4+4 then that must exclude one of each of 1+1, 2+2, 3+3, 5+5 and 6+6 from the total combinations. So that would be 5 possibilities from 30......which is still 1 in 6.

So we're back to 1/6.

This is nonsense. It's not a "trick question", it's a fairly simple probability question that anyone with a basic statistics background (such as would be required in that role) would be able to answer.

There are 36 possible combinations for rolling two dice together, and those include (1,1), (2,2), (3,3), (4,4), (5,5) and (6,6). Of those 36 combinations, only (2,6), (3,5), (4,4), (5,3) and (6,2) equal 8. Therefore the answer is 5/36.

In terms of the "after n rolls" question, I believe the questioner was asking for the interviewee to generalise this sort of approach to develop a formula such that you could calculate, for any given value of n, the probability of landing on that square. This would be much more complex, but is something that someone with a strong background in probability could probably answer given a bit of time.

 

[welshbairn]

2 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

This would be much more complex, but is something that someone with a strong background in probability could probably answer given a bit of time.

My position precisely!

[PB1994]

A video about how to win by cheating at Monopoly has just turned up in my youtube suggestions. Get this chat in the fucking bin.

Link?

For the last 3 nights I’ve been made bankrupt by a 5 year old so I’m wanting to humiliate him tomorrow.

[A96]

2 hours ago, CountyFan said:

 

The only bad ones are the weirdly common ones which end with the candidate saying "is there any reason you cant give me the job"? or words to that effect. It puts me right off. I think folk must be told to say that. 

 I can only think they’re hoping for an answer that’ll give them grounds for claiming they’ve been discriminated against in some way. So unless the job is one where being a complete and utter c@nt is seen as  essential or at least advantageous , I’d have thought that merely putting that question to the interviewer would end any chance of the applicant getting the job.