Coming to Agreement, a logic puzzle for Oxford admissions interviews
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Re: Coming to Agreement, a logic puzzle for Oxford admissions interviews
#2[deleted]
Re: Coming to Agreement, a logic puzzle for Oxford admissions interviews
#3These puzzles would make horrible college admissions tests.
They hardly qualify as interview questions.
This typpe of problem is nearly impossible for folks that have never heard a similar test and nearly trivial for someone who has heard ~3 like it.
Re: Coming to Agreement, a logic puzzle for Oxford admissions interviews
#4I'm surprised more people didn't recognize the two generals problem.
Re: Coming to Agreement, a logic puzzle for Oxford admissions interviews
#5These puzzles would make horrible college admissions tests. They hardly qualify as interview questions. This typpe of problem is nearly impossible for folks that have never heard a similar test and nearly trivial for someone who has heard ~3 like it.
They were used for interviews for maths and CS, so I think it’s quite likely the candidates would have seen similar puzzles before, but I think that misses the point. This sort of puzzle is there so that the students can either present and an answer and the interviewer can start to dig into it with more questions, or so that the candidate doesn’t come up with an answer immediately and the interviewer can ask other questions that will help them reason things out.
The object is generally to explore how a candidate thinks. If it turns out they memorised logic puzzles and can’t explain them then they will not get through the interview.
Re: Coming to Agreement, a logic puzzle for Oxford admissions interviews
#6These puzzles would make horrible college admissions tests. They hardly qualify as interview questions. This typpe of problem is nearly impossible for folks that have never heard a similar test and nearly trivial for someone who has heard ~3 like it.
Apparently it's neither intended nor used as an "impossible/trivial" problem:
The interviews were an in-depth back-and-forth discussion, as much as could be had in about 25 minutes. These interviews, of course, are just one component among many in regard to the difficult admissions decision, a chance for the candidate to show us how they think through a problem, how well they can explain their ideas, how well they take hints and suggestions. In every interview, we had paused at a certain stage, when the candidate had a fully formed argument for one of the variations, and asked them to undertake an integrative exercise, summarizing as clearly as they could the entire problem and solution and how they expected it to play out. Since these were interviews for joint philosophy degrees, in my view this step was a key part of the interview, measuring the ability of the candidate to integrate what they had learned from the discussion and to present a complete, coherent argument.
Re: Coming to Agreement, a logic puzzle for Oxford admissions interviews
#7I'm surprised more people didn't recognize the two generals problem.
FTA: We had used these puzzles in our admissions interviews of candidates for a place at Oxford University in the degree courses Math/philosophy, CS/philosophy, and PPE at University College, Oxford
I’m not familiar with the term “degree course”, but suspect the candidates were bright, but also around 18 years old.
Re: Coming to Agreement, a logic puzzle for Oxford admissions interviews
#8I'm surprised more people didn't recognize the two generals problem.
These are probably admissions for high schoolers.
Re: Coming to Agreement, a logic puzzle for Oxford admissions interviews
#9„Imagine the stakes are very high—perhaps life and death.“
The only acceptable solution for perfectly rational players in the case of „death“ as possible down side while only having „live“ as a potential upside would be to extend the game indefinitely by telling the co-player that you will never agree on a different strategy than infinite play - all possible rewards, zero downside risk!
Where can I get my ticket to Oxford?
Re: Coming to Agreement, a logic puzzle for Oxford admissions interviews
#10Consensus protocols 101? It seems to boil down to, 'who will subordinate' - it doesn't matter who, so long as someone does. There is a risk of interminably failing to come to consensus on a means for finding consensus, though, an infinite regression that would necessarily need to be broken by one or the other...