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Earlier quoted context omitted.
And then if Ballmer assumes the other party assumes he's being adversarial we get into game theory.
The way forward is to make Ballmer pay with time for screwing with you, which gets us into geopolitics, and then using the resulting MAD dynamics to make the game fair again. That's how adults with keys to the nukes do it :).
As an interviewee my first question would be – are you going to play fair, and how can I verify it?
“Secondly, when significant money is involved, I make sure to verify any inputs. I’m considering the situation, not you personally, untrusted. How can I verify it, or do you want me to proceed assuming that’s verified?”
Those are great questions, but it’s also about how you ask it. SWE is not pure engineering. Communications is vitally important.
Title is wrong in implying Balmer is incorrect and the article shows that the title is wrong. If clickbait is misleading, then this is worse than clickbait, no? > Ballmer states that the answer is "No" for two reasons: firstly, because he can pick numbers that'll be the most difficult for you... The article goes on to show that there are numbers where a binary search always has the guesser paying $1
> secondly because the expected value of the game (assuming Ballmer chooses randomly) is negative: you end up paying Ballmer
"Should you accept to play this game?" Absolutely yes. I like games. The purpose of games is to have fun. This seems like a fun game for like the first $20, a sum I can afford to play a fun game for 10 minutes. Then at the end, I get to say "I once lost $20 to Steve Balmer playing binary search", which is a fun sentence I can dine out on, and is worth more than $20 to me. I feel like perhaps this is why MS under Balm…
If you answered like this in an interview I would definitely not give you the job. I did actually interview someone once who was like this - "How would you do this?" "Well you shouldn't do it. I think you should do this other thing.". He did not get the job.
Title is wrong in implying Balmer is incorrect and the article shows that the title is wrong. If clickbait is misleading, then this is worse than clickbait, no? > Ballmer states that the answer is "No" for two reasons: firstly, because he can pick numbers that'll be the most difficult for you... The article goes on to show that there are numbers where a binary search always has the guesser paying $1
Also the number only exists in Ballmer's mind, so if he wanted to, he could change it to be unfavourable should you make a lucky guess. Here, you can play the game with me. Higher. Lower. Higher. Higher. Lower. Correct. Six guesses, you owe me $1.
Didn't Steve Ballmer start off at MSFT essentially in a biz ops role, supporting execs when the company was super small? Interesting how he became technical as the company grew. Pretty rare.
"Should you accept to play this game?" Absolutely yes. I like games. The purpose of games is to have fun. This seems like a fun game for like the first $20, a sum I can afford to play a fun game for 10 minutes. Then at the end, I get to say "I once lost $20 to Steve Balmer playing binary search", which is a fun sentence I can dine out on, and is worth more than $20 to me. I feel like perhaps this is why MS under Balm…
The article implies that the interviewee assumes that the number is being chosen randomly, when Ballmer could actually be choosing adversarially. However, if the interviewee assumes that Ballmer is being adversarial, then you can pick a different value as your initial guess, which causes the probabilities to shift. Even the OP assumes that the interviewee will start guessing with 50, but, because of the way binary se…
Given that 7 guesses covers 128 numbers, you can offset by +/- 14 without actually affecting the "worst case" of the algorithm (i.e. provided you have at most 64 either side of your guess). As you say, randomly selecting this offset would neuter most adversarial examples (purposefully chosen to fall into the gaps of binary search) and would possibly completely remove the benefits from adversarial choice (though a tailored distribution on offset might be required there).
I'd be interested in such an analysis too.
Didn't Steve Ballmer start off at MSFT essentially in a biz ops role, supporting execs when the company was super small? Interesting how he became technical as the company grew. Pretty rare.
It's surprising the extent to which the tech community overfits towards classifying intelligent individuals as either exclusively technical or nontechnical. Recruiters are especially weak in this regard, e.g., if you've ever been effective at sales or people leadership, you are likely ineffective at swe or data science or vice versa. The most intelligent folks I've worked with are very diverse in their interests and…
> as either exclusively technical or nontechnical
This applies outside of tech or generally in any role e.g. if you're a backend engineer they assume you don't know frontend or if you're a marketing specialist you're not good at sales.
I never get it either. We're people not machines but most people have this assumption like we're a game character - you get a job / trait and that's it.
Title is wrong in implying Balmer is incorrect and the article shows that the title is wrong. If clickbait is misleading, then this is worse than clickbait, no? > Ballmer states that the answer is "No" for two reasons: firstly, because he can pick numbers that'll be the most difficult for you... The article goes on to show that there are numbers where a binary search always has the guesser paying $1
Although Ballmer could still be incorrect, because a 'sufficiently logical' player would also presumably know that he could pick numbers that'll be the most difficult to find via binary-search, so by the same logic you could also meta-game it, and assume any number that can be found in 5 steps with a binary search is immediately out. This would narrow the search space to only 37 numbers, which can then easily be foun…