If You Miss a Brainteaser........
If you miss one of the Brainteasers in the I-Banking interview, are you pretty much done for?
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i dont think they expect you to answer all of them correctly. its more of a way to weed out the mentally inept
However, I did have one superday where I noticed that a bunch of people who missed on the relatively easy brainteasers did not move on to the next rounds.
what was it?
If you get the wrong answer but had the right thought process, the interviewer might say something to point you in the right direction. The key is to think out loud to demonstrate some intelligent thought process, which is far more important the right answer - especially if it's some caveman question like how many potholes are there in new york city.
hah reminds me of a brain teaser I had a few years ago - "What is the degree difference between the hour and minute hand on an analog clock at 3:15"
pause.... ... ... (realizing I need to at least say something)
"Well it would be 1/48 of the clock..."
Interviewer a: "wrong, try again" Interviewer b: turns to A and mutters something
they begin arguing (this was sort of humorous, but whatever), when they stop and finally turn back to me
"Well it would be 1/48 of the clock... which is 7.5 out of 360..."
which is the correct answer, I still can't believe that they arguing with each other for a good 15-20 seconds right in front of me.
had that same question before. i kind of stalled for a bit by saying "well it's not 0 degrees..." they were like, "it's not?". kinda stalled until I got 1/4 * 1/12 = 1/48 and they seemed pleased.
To make it easy thinking in degrees not proportions, you have to just think that there are 30 degrees between 3 and 4 o'clock (360 degrees / 60 minutes = 6 * 5 minutes = 30 degrees). At 3:15, the minute hand will be at 3 o'clock and the hour hand will be 1/4 of the way to the 4 o'clock hand. Therefore, the difference is 1/4 of 30 degrees = 30/4 = 15/2 = 7.5 degrees.
Try to get them right, discuss your thought process to show you are intelliget, but they dont care if you get the answer bang on or not.
It seems to be more about showing your thought process. Brainteasers are hard by definition, and most of them have some sort of trick that you're not going to be looking for unless you're already familiar with it. I think they just want to a)rattle you a little and see how you respond to pressure and b) make sure that you can at least take a decent stab at it and come up with a good (if not necessarily right) answer.
There are two strings of different dimensions. If you burn either string from one end, it'll take exactly one hour to burn the entire string. Now, the rate at which the string burns varies at different points on the strong because the materials used to compose of it are different.
You're given these two strings and a lighter. Find a method that would let you know exactly 45 minutes have passed.
light string 1 on both ends, string 2 on one end, in 30 min when string 1 is burned up, light other end of string 2
Alpine - during their aurgument, I figured 360/12 = 30 and 30/4 = 7.5
same answer, slightly different thought process
I interviewed with most of the BBs and did not get a single brainteaser. I think they are less common than most people think.
my brainteaser was:
How many rounds were there in a 128-player tennis tournament?
I got lucked out, cuz I played junior tennis tournament and I am a tennis fanatic. The answer is 7, by the way. 2^7=128
how do u know that u need to calculate 2 to the 7th power?
Seems like a really easy one to me, although I'd just do it the other way round by dividing by 2 down to the final round. I only ever had the clock hands one but since I knew the answer I just faked my working out aloud real quick not to give that fact away. They seem pretty pointless and as people have said they are actually quite rare.
Did anyone of you get the offer despite a disastrous performance on Brain Teasers? (Originally Posted: 05/16/2017)
I can't see myself ever answering math based brain teasers confidently. Am I worrying to much about them or are they in the end not that important? (Assuming I was very good at the technical part and have a good social fit)
Will you please just stop being a tease and finish me off?
.
You can't fumble over simple technical questions (WACC, valuing a company, simple accounting) but struggling through brain teasers is okay. But try your best to take a deep breath and break the q apart: what is the interviewer asking for, then what is the 1st step to solving, then 2nd, etc. until you find the answer. They want to see how you think. E.g. Xproduct is valued at 100, Yproduct is valued at 200, what is Zproduct valued at? Well, you can stop and think: Zproduct is most similar to Xproduct, so I'll value it at that (100). Don't just pick a random number, have some logic to it and you'll be fine.
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