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Topic: How many cars are there in the USA? (Read 55366 times) |
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jack_the_ripper
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How many cars are there in the USA?
« on: Dec 24th, 2003, 2:24am » |
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can anyone tell me what will be a suitable answer for this? i am gonna give an interview in mircosoft and expecting more helps from all of u friends.. 
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towr
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #1 on: Dec 24th, 2003, 3:35am » |
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I'd say, too many
I'd estimate some 150 million, but if you want a more exact number I can google for it  (really, who cares about trivia, as long as you know where you can get the answer in reasonable time)
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Viperdude619
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #2 on: Jan 11th, 2004, 5:24pm » |
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Here's how I would answer: "There are 143,781,202 cars in the USA, if you disagree then count them all so you're sure I'm wrong."
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Dqwez
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #3 on: Mar 12th, 2004, 2:14pm » |
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Say the US has 400mln approx people.
40% might own/drive cars. (That includes the Truck driving Bubbas down south).
That gives you an approx figure of about 160mln. Thats a lot of cars.
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Cathos
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #4 on: Mar 14th, 2004, 10:09pm » |
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There are no cars. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy explains this rather nicely:
1) Space is infinite
2) Only a finite number of planets are inhabited
3) Any finite number divided by infinity is so close to nothing as to make no difference, therefore the number of inhabited planets, and thus people, is zero, and anyone you meet along the way is just a figment of a deranged imagination
Since there are no people in the universe, nobody is around to build cars, and even if they could, they would have nobody to market them to. So it seems the whole automobile industry is one of the worst bussiness decisions in the entire universe.
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pedronunezmd
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #5 on: Jun 5th, 2004, 2:24pm » |
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Quote:| really, who cares about trivia, as long as you know where you can get the answer in reasonable time |
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This is my first post in the microsoft section of the forum, but my assumption is that microsoft is more interested in how you arrive at an answer during the interview, rather than seeing if you know the "answer" to this type of "trivia" question?
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manu sharma
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #6 on: Aug 22nd, 2004, 11:04am » |
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it is my first mail,and in this question interviewer is looking for the approach you used.i think they want to know how will you count the number of cars in USA?
you can count the number of cars by counting the number of cars coming at petrol filling station for a number of days.because people used to take the petrol from nearby petrol filling station. 
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Patashu
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #7 on: Sep 11th, 2004, 4:30pm » |
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on Mar 14th, 2004, 10:09pm, Cathos wrote:There are no cars. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy explains this rather nicely:
1) Space is infinite
2) Only a finite number of planets are inhabited
3) Any finite number divided by infinity is so close to nothing as to make no difference, therefore the number of inhabited planets, and thus people, is zero, and anyone you meet along the way is just a figment of a deranged imagination
Since there are no people in the universe, nobody is around to build cars, and even if they could, they would have nobody to market them to. So it seems the whole automobile industry is one of the worst bussiness decisions in the entire universe.
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And there are also no people to write up those paragraphs, or to post/quote them when neccesary.
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Three Hands
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #8 on: Sep 12th, 2004, 6:06am » |
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However, given that a finite region of space has been determined (the USA), the total number of people and automobiles is not 0 at present (I believe).
However, I would propose working out the position of each car in the USA (using a satellite image or similar), which would have the advantage of causing the traffic cops some problems, as they can't work out their speed
Or, more seriously, look at statistics that have been compiled about the total number of cars in the USA, or just run an estimate on the number of households in the USA multiplied by the average number of cars per household in the USA (both would require information that I don't personally know, but suspect have been compiled by government surveys...)
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John_Gaughan
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #9 on: Sep 13th, 2004, 6:36am » |
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on Sep 12th, 2004, 6:06am, Three Hands wrote:| However, given that a finite region of space has been determined (the USA), the total number of people and automobiles is not 0 at present (I believe). |
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I am a U.S. citizen and own two cars. Therefor the answer is not 0 
Anyway, I think it was FDR that promised a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. One answer would be "the number of cars is equal to the number of garages."
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Grimbal
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #10 on: Sep 13th, 2004, 3:26pm » |
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This is not a logical statement, unless it is stated that your 2 cars are in the United States.
When Cathos says "there are no cars", it does not mean the number is mathematically 0, but just close to zero. And this is true, I guess, at the scale of the Universe.
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John_Gaughan
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #11 on: Sep 14th, 2004, 11:48am » |
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First you say my answer is not logical, which is true, then you talk about zero not being mathematical zero but "close enough." You are contradicting yourself 
I own two cars, both of which are located in the United States. No, sorry, I jointly own one them with my wife. So do I really own 1.5 cars, from a logical standpoint?
Anyway, from the standpoint of a single person sitting and talking with an interviewer, one is not expected to say "from the Universe's perspective, there are close to zero cars in the U.S." One is expected to give an answer from a human's perspective.
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Grimbal
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #12 on: Sep 14th, 2004, 3:45pm » |
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on Sep 14th, 2004, 11:48am, John_Gaughan wrote:
... , then you talk about zero not being mathematical zero but "close enough." ...
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I don't think I said that. But I agree, if you really want the job you better don't refer to the Hitchhiker's Guide.
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towr
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #13 on: Sep 15th, 2004, 1:27am » |
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If they don't appreciate literary references I wouldn't want to work there anyway
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Cathos
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #14 on: Sep 16th, 2004, 9:04pm » |
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Well, given an appropraite margin of error... Zero cars, plus or minus a billion...
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Icarus
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #15 on: Sep 17th, 2004, 7:28pm » |
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The answer depends on which job you are applying for. If you are an accountant, "how many do you want there to be?" might be a successful response.
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John_Gaughan
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #16 on: Sep 21st, 2004, 8:31am » |
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An accountant applying for a job at Enron?
Anyway, you are correct, it depends on the job. Microsoft employs more than just programmers. Lawyers might give one nonsense response, accountants another, and PR/advertising people another. Programmers/computer scientists are probably the ones most likely to overanalyze, however. Just scroll up in this thread
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Whymme
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #17 on: Oct 2nd, 2004, 11:56am » |
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on Mar 14th, 2004, 10:09pm, Cathos wrote:There are no cars. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy explains this rather nicely:
[SNIP]
Since there are no people in the universe, nobody is around to build cars, and even if they could, they would have nobody to market them to. So it seems the whole automobile industry is one of the worst bussiness decisions in the entire universe.
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Well, yeah. Try this at your job interview, end the explanation with: "and thus there are no cars", and the interviewer will say: "According to that logic, there is no job. Goodbye."
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freaks
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #18 on: Nov 6th, 2004, 2:34am » |
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Total number of cars in the USA = (Total number of cars manufactured in the USA + Total number of cars imported in the USA - Total number of cars exported from the USA)
Subtract (Total number of cars that have been scrapped in the USA), if you want a more perfect answer.
Am I politiocally correct?
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Sam
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #19 on: Nov 7th, 2004, 8:36pm » |
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Let
Population = 250 million
People per household = 3
Cars/household = 1
Avg life of car = 10 years
Total cars = ((25 X 10^6) / 3) / 10 - 1
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Grimbal
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #20 on: Nov 8th, 2004, 2:03am » |
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on Nov 7th, 2004, 8:36pm, Sam wrote:Let
Population = 250 million
People per household = 3
Cars/household = 1
Avg life of car = 10 years
Total cars = ((25 X 10^6) / 3) / 10 - 1
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(25 X 10^6): don't you mean 25 x 10^7?
/10 : that would mean you want the number of cars *bought every year*.
-1 : did you just break your car?
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coolnfundu
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #21 on: Nov 10th, 2004, 9:41pm » |
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well to approach the answer with any degree of surety I would definitely need more information ... but to start with I would go like this ... aprox population of USA is x ... and approx population of people ownig cars be say 20 percent or 30 percent ... (minus children, old people, so on) so there so I would go with .25x as number of people with cars and that should give me an approx number of so many cars ...
To arrive at an exact answer needs further information and if I had an option to locate that information, I would rather call up car office and find the number out
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the microsoft test taker
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #22 on: Dec 8th, 2004, 3:11am » |
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hi! jack_the_ripper
even i am to take the microsoft interview in the near future.Please mail me any questions you come across while your research for the questions and i'll do the same from my side.Also mail the questions that you faced while being interviewed by microsoft.
Hope you have seen the questions available on the net for the microsoft test/interview.
do take a look.
reagrds,
test taker
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Icarus
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #23 on: Dec 8th, 2004, 8:09am » |
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Good luck with your job interview, but you might notice that Jack posted this a year ago. And he has never posted again. I wouldn't count on his still being around.
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kane
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Re: How many cars are there in the USA?
« Reply #24 on: Dec 9th, 2004, 9:02pm » |
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i agree with the above posts. the interviewer just wants to know how you think. the answer is not as important as your thought process.
with that said, i have another approach to the problem.
sampling:
consider the space of VIN numbers. these are essentially IDs for each car, with a finite length and pattern. let the total number of different combinations of VIN's be T.
randomly pick a set of VIN's. (this is very important. it must be random. you can't just look at the VIN's in your neighborhood, otherwise your sampling will be biased.)
there's probably some Database of valid VIN's.
figure out how many of your sample VIN's are valid VIN's (valid means there is a car associated with it and that it is in the U.S.)
the percentage of valid VIN's to T is approximately equal the total number of cars in the U.S.
how does that sound?
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