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Steve Ballmer's incorrect binary search interview question
In this short video Steve Ballmer talks about a puzzle question he would ask candidates interviewing at Microsoft. Solving it is based on b...
In the video above Ballmer chooses 59 which a binary search strategy would have found in 5 steps resulting in the interviewer, Emily Chang, winning $1. The code calculates the number of guesses for each value and an overall expected value assuming Ballmer chooses randomly. The gives the expected value as 5 * 1/100 + 4 * 2/100 + 3 * 4/100 + 2 * 8/100 + 1 * 16/100 + 0 * 32/100 + -1 * 37/100 (note the last term is the remaining possible numbers having reached the end of the binary search).
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