Category Archives: interview questions

An Interview Question about Car Replacements

Posted on February 26, 2022 by mzspivey

Recently I came across the following on a site that provides questions on probability and statistics for tech interviews. I solved it, and so I thought I would give my solution here. Suppose there is a new vehicle launch upcoming. … Continue reading →

Posted in interview questions, probability | 1 Comment

Picking Random Points on a Circle (Not a Disk)

Posted on April 17, 2015 by mzspivey

How do you select points at random on a circle?  By “circle” I mean the outside of a disk, not its interior.  In this post I’m going to discuss two methods: (1) Selecting an angle at random on and taking … Continue reading →

Posted in interview questions, probability, simulation, statistics | 2 Comments

The Expected Number of Flips for a Coin to Achieve n Consecutive Heads

Posted on February 9, 2012 by mzspivey

A common probability problem is to determine the expected number of flips required before a coin comes up heads the first time.  The coin doesn’t even have to be fair; the analysis is pretty much the same even if the … Continue reading →

Posted in coin flipping, interview questions, probability | 4 Comments