Looking at these questions just makes me feel stupid.
...and that kids is why I never went to Oxford.
Glad they're keeping standards high in those places mind.
Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
31–40 of 52 posts
Re: Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
#32I suspect the Oxford\Cambridge undergrad interviews have less to do with assessing technical competency and more to do with providing admissions with a reason to discriminate against state-educated kids. The amount of Oxbridge intake come from private schools is disproportionately high to be due to exam results alone, and is better explained by an ingrained negative view of those with a state education or old boys ne…
I have first hand experience of the Cambridge interview process and was successful despite being a state school candidate.
I read mathematics and my interviews were purely technical. (None of those "hundred uses of a toothbrush" for me - perhaps those were for the arts students ;-) )
In the UK we are in the unfortunate situation whereby school examinations are so easy (as a result of political intervention) that it is effectively impossible to distinguish between the best candidate on examination results alone.
Privately educated students do make up a much larger proportion of the student body than they "should", compared to the overall population. However, it could be (correctly) argued that state school pupils are more reluctant to apply in the first place.
I can confirm that at Cambridge between'97 and '00 there was a concerted effort by the university and the student body to encourage applications from statistically underrepresented sections of society.
Re: Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only some UK universities have a collegiate system (Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, St. Andrews(?)). Most do not (I believe) and I imagine are roughly similar to US universities. At collegiate universities there is a split between what a college is responsible for, and what the university is responsible for. Lectures are university-wide, exams also are (you get your degree from the university not the college), departments…
OK, this really helps; thanks! Let's say that you really wanted to study CS at Oxford; if you pick the wrong college to apply to, are you shut out from the university entirely? Or can you apply to multiple colleges at the same university at once?
It's different for postgraduates. Undergrads can only apply to one college and to one uni at a time, as @andrew1 mentions. Postgrads can apply to both unis. As for college selection, I had to apply to my department first (ComLab) and then I listed four colleges in order of preference. Once the department accepted my application, it was up to one of the colleges to accept me, though I did get my first choice.
Re: Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really see what you mean ("3 segments" suggests asking for f(1/3) and f(2/3) to me, but that's not enough data to know anything). I'll type what I thought, which may be the same thing. If a = f(c) then a You could recurse on the above, e.g. by measuring 1/4 + 1/8 and 1/4 + 3/8 if 1/4 Another interesting trick is measuring 1/2 + epsilon, which (almost) bisects the range with only two measurements. [EDIT^2: rem…
Measuring 1/3, 1/2, and 2/3 does not tell you which 1/3 of the range you should look. There are 3 cases to consider: 1. f(1/3) is the biggest. In this case you learn that m is between 0 and 1/2. 2. f(1/2) is the biggest. In this case you learn that m is between 1/3 and 2/3. 3. f(2/3) is biggest. You learn that m is between 1/2 and 1. * * * Edit: as for measuring 1/2 + epsilon, it’s no worse for “adversarial input”. Y…
[deleted]
Re: Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I should hope that's true of interviews everywhere. It's worth noting as well that Oxford is by far the most theoretical of all the CS departments in the UK.
As a student at Cambridge, I doubt Oxford is "far" more theoretical. The London Universities like Imperial are also notable for focusing on theory over practice. I think they assume we can learn practical skills on-the-fly and they are not as beneficial as a solid theoretical grounding. These Oxford interview questions are more difficult than I expected, especially under Oxbridge interview conditions. Like mentioned…
Generally all the top-tier universities are more theoretical than the lower tier universities.
Historically Oxford has been much more focused on the rigorous underpinning of CS by Mathematics than other universities, although in recent years they've been cutting down on this and moving closer to the CS syllabus offered by other top-tier universities.
Here's the course list for first year at Oxford:
• Functional Programming
• Design & Analysis of Algorithms
• Imperative Programming I
• Imperative Programming II
• Digital Systems
• Discrete Mathematics
• Logic and Proof
• Linear Algebra
• Calculus
• Probability
Re: Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
#36Looking at these questions just makes me feel stupid. ...and that kids is why I never went to Oxford. Glad they're keeping standards high in those places mind.
> Looking at these questions just makes me feel stupid
"Stupid is as stupid does."
Re: Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
#37All Discrete math, which it turns out is pretty useful for computer programmers
Re: Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a student at Cambridge, I doubt Oxford is "far" more theoretical. The London Universities like Imperial are also notable for focusing on theory over practice. I think they assume we can learn practical skills on-the-fly and they are not as beneficial as a solid theoretical grounding. These Oxford interview questions are more difficult than I expected, especially under Oxbridge interview conditions. Like mentioned…
Generally all the top-tier universities are more theoretical than the lower tier universities. Historically Oxford has been much more focused on the rigorous underpinning of CS by Mathematics than other universities, although in recent years they've been cutting down on this and moving closer to the CS syllabus offered by other top-tier universities. Here's the course list for first year at Oxford: • Functional Progr…
In the first year all of us do Computer Science (2 papers), Mathematics (1 paper), and a science subject (1 paper, I did Physics). It is predominantly theoretical (something I found hard to cope with):
1st year: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/0809/part1a-cst.html
2nd year: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/0910/part1b.html
3rd year: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1011/part2.html
Although I think there is far too much content to learn thoroughly in three years, it does provide a broad understanding of what there is to know. Does Oxford have online course material, I'd be interested to take a look? I expect the universities overlap a lot but there might be some worthwhile additions.
Re: Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, this really helps; thanks! Let's say that you really wanted to study CS at Oxford; if you pick the wrong college to apply to, are you shut out from the university entirely? Or can you apply to multiple colleges at the same university at once?
Nope, you can only apply to one college at either Oxford or Cambridge per year (you can't apply to both universities, which probably makes sense as almost everyone who applied to one would probably apply to the other). There is a clearing system I think where if the college you apply to doesn't want you then other colleges can look at your application and choose to interview you, but I think that's fairly rare.
Whilst you're discouraged at all levels from applying to both Ox and Cam, I don't think it's true that you can't. But you're correct about the second interviews (at other colleges). This was actually pretty standard (for Biochem, at Oxford) when I applied and you went for the alternative interview (at a college you're assigned to, you don't get a second choice) before the first has made any sort of decision on you. There is a second safety net, whereby you can be 'pooled' (which is basically what you describe); if you don't have a college preference from the outset, you can apply directly to the pool (again, this is Oxford, not necessarily Cambridge)
Re: Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems
#40[SPOILER for 4 - "Monkey beans"] The answer is not probabilistic (that is, the last bean is either white with 100% probability, or black with 100% probability). This took me a while to figure out.
I'm confused at the first hurdle
What if the money picks out 2 white beans at the start?
"If they are the same he puts a black bean back in the urn"