A math/programming question

we had a meeting at 3:30 and three of us are waiting for 2 more people to join us. In between we are discussing about an interview question that I asked yesterday. What is the sun of all the 3 digit numbers that is divisible by 7? Sathish answered he can not do it with pen and paper but can do it as a Java program.

int sum = 0;
for(int i=100;i<1000;i++)
if(i % 7 == 0)
sum += i;
print(i)

Anish bettered the answer saying we don't need to do expensive division

and can do it using a while loop

int sum = 0;
int i = 105;
while(i<1000)
{
sum += i;
i += 7;
}
return i;

I don't like for loop and wanted a generic solution where the divisible number can be anything.
I don't want to change the code in case want to add all the 7 digit numbers divisible by 71. Or so on. Sathish's program can be tweaked a little to make it more generic, but that is not what we wanted. I wanted the expensive division operators out. And want to change while loops to for loops.

int getSum(int factor, int lowest, int highest) {
int start = ((lowest-1)/factor)+1)*factor;
int end = (highest/factor)*factor;
int sum = 0;
for(int i=start;i<=end;i+=factor){
sum += i;
}
return i;
}

Statistics is like a mini skirt

I had some spared time last month and had some spared money. So I thought of investing in share market. Before investing I started my own research, and found couple of guys who give HOT TIPS. Importantly they make their old tips public as how successful they are. It comes with nice charts and all. Impressive! I was looking at their tips. Their tips spanned for one year when Sensex was in 9000 to when sensex zoomed to 17000. The investment I made when sensex was at 21,000 and have not touched during bearish market fared better than the tip period. I looked for tips when market was in 21,000 date and no tips. Wrote a mail to the customer care and got a reply saying they don't keep data beyond a year. Nice way to put data we actually give good tips when tips is no better than market sentiment.


One of my friend was buying a home in 2005. He was looking at various housing loans. An agent from a private leading bank approached him with all the details. He said bank provides 2 kind of home loan interest 1)Fixed rate and 2) floating rate. Fixed rate Interest was about 1 percent higher than the floating rate. I advised him to go for fixed rate as the interest rate is all time high and can go up at any time. And he almost agreed. Then came our counselor, the home loan agent. He said rate has never changed in last 25 years for people who opted for floating interest rate. So most probable it wont change either. Why to pay extra one more percent. And my friend got convinced and signed the document. I have not asked the question on the spot, but later realized the interest rate went down with time in last 26 years. And bank never handed the facility to borrower. Will it continue to do the same in case rate goes up? And my doubt turned true. He got loan with 7 percent and paying an interest of 11.5 percent.

Another interview

I have taken 100s of interviews. Interviewing and short listing the right candidate is one of the key requirement for my job. Last Friday my boss and HR called me to take a couple of interviews. I was not surprised as I take interviews. But then my boss said, the interviews were not for JAVA professionals, rather it is for QA engineers. He then told me the mandate. I would be looking at the skill sets beyond functional testing.

First round of the interviews were to be conducted by our senior QA engineers, who would look at functional testing use case writing etc. I would look at the knowledge beyond QA. I would look at stretch goals such as do they know how to deploy application, how to look logs and provide some useful information to development beyond a bug. Can they help development reproduce the bug in development if it were not reproducible. We have an aggressive growth plan, so need resources urgently, but we don't want to hire the wrong person. So I was anxious to do the job and tensed if I will be able to do it right.

I met with a senior QA engineer to understand what they are looking for. What are the typical questions they ask. I was working with the QA team closely, so I have a clear understanding about their work and expectations. Then came the interview time, I have to meet the candidates after met by a senior QA engineers. I was tensed for the first guy, and the tension reduced gradually. Asked them from a range of questions unit testing, functional testing to some UNIX commands and deployment and puzzles.

I figured out it was just another day with a new experience.

Statistics is like a mini skirt

and it hides more than it reveals.

Infosys was one of the best Indian corporate. I was surpised to find out that Infosys more competative than Harvard. I ask the fundamental question, what is harder? How do I decide whether X or Yis harder? And x and y can be Infosys, Harvard or any other entity. To me if I (or simillar people who wish to join both Infosys and Harvard) can get x but not y then y is harder for me. By doing the same for large number of people we can figure out what is harder. Another approach would be give Y to people who have X and X to people who have Y. In case many people who have Y are ready join X, then X is better and vice versa. Given that, many infoscians would be happy to join Harvard but not the other way. But statistics says the Infosys has a higher rejection ratio, so a tough place to get in.

Currently I was looking at Silicon India article, which said average salary of woman is 30 percent less than that of ab average man in Indian IT industry. I was stunned to read the news. I have not come across any IT organization which makes salary discrimination based on sex. I thought may be my knowledge is limited or I worked only at companies which does not discriminate or both. But I read the line again, it said the average salary of Indian females is less than that of average males. It can be possible because the ratio of men to women is higher for senior people who draw higher salary than the ratio in the lower salary. For example say a freshers gets 3,00,000 per anum and a 5 years exp clad gets 12,00,000 per anum. And the male to female ratio at 5 years exp is 3:1 which is 2:1 for freshers and the ratio of fresher to 5 yr exp is 3:1

We can take the smallest number with M1,M2,M3,F1 getting 12,00,000 per anum and M4,M5,M6,M7,M8,M9,M10,M11,F2,F3,F4,F5 getting 3,00,000 per anum.

Average salary of males = 5,45,454 per anum
Average Salary of females = 4,80,000 per anum

Which says the average salary is lower for woman. The figure gets even worse with higher ratio between fresher to senior position, higher salary difference and lower ratio at senior positions and higher ratio at fresher level. Of course it gets better with the opposite conditions, but truth will make the average salary look lower.

I would like to know the sample size and how average salary is calculated before jumping the gun and say women in IT paid lower than the men.

Then ave sal of male =

Then average sal of male = 12

Forced to paste against my and company's will

I had a policy from Bajaj Allianz. Today I tried to register for the same. It has form fields such as name id etc. It has interesting questions like mail id and confirm mail id. I typed my mail id. It take the whole mail id when I typed pa. Looked cool. When I am trying to enter confirm mail id, it did not read from the previous entered data, rather wanted me to feed it. Looked good. Manual error in copy pasting is handled well.

After putting my id and before putting the domain name I have to put @. Unfortunately I have a laptop with Swiss key board where @ comes with key stroke Alt GR + 2 instead of Shift + 2. I am habituated with it. So typed the same. Err.. It prompted me with a message you can not copy paste here. I have the option of disabling the java script and type it. Then enable the java script. Or to register from office. Both will take whatever I have entered away and have to do it again.

I copied my mail id from the mail id and pasted it in the confirm mail id by clicking right click paste.

Bajaj Allianz has a good intention of not allowing paste in the confirm mail id. But it left me with only option of pasting me the mail id. I am forced to do what Bajaj Allianz did not want. I do not understand why Alt Gr key is not allowed but right click is allowed in a site. And in case it wanted to stop pasting, then it should have blocked ctl+v instead of simillar sounding Alt GR key. I have posted the same as a feedback t bajaj Allianz and will post their reponse if any.

The error is a smaller one and won't loose any customers. I would have continued at Bajaj Allianz irrespective of the outcome. However sometimes product miss what they intend to do.