De Shaw SDE Interview Question
Summary
I recently interviewed at De Shaw for an entry-level Software Developer position, where I was asked two challenging algorithmic problems. I struggled with one of them and was unable to provide a complete solution.
Full Experience
I recently had an interview at De Shaw for an entry-level Software Developer role. The interview process focused heavily on problem-solving skills, and I was presented with two distinct coding challenges. While I felt I understood the first problem and could approach it, the second question proved to be quite complex, and I unfortunately could not come up with a full solution during the allotted time.
Interview Questions (2)
You are given 'k' number of groups, each having an unequal range (e.g., g1: 0-10, g2: 11-15, g3: 16-22, g4: 23-34). You are also given a sequence of numbers. The task is to find the length of the minimum window in the sequence that contains at least one element from every group. The interviewer specified that I had to solve this problem without using a map.
For example: Given sequence: 9, 5, 3, 12, 17, 25, 27 Expected Answer: 4
You are given a binary tree. You need to find the length of the longest Arithmetic Progression (AP) series within the tree, subject to the following constraints:
- No two nodes in the AP series can be consecutive (i.e., directly parent-child or sibling).
- The 'distance' between any two consecutive terms of the AP series (defined as the number of nodes between the two nodes) should be from 1 to 3 (inclusive). This means there can be one, two, or three nodes separating consecutive terms in the sequence path.
- You cannot revisit a node once you traverse it. For example, if the path is 1 -> 2 -> 5 -> 4 -> 3, then 1, 3, 5 is not a valid sequence for an AP series because of the traversal rules.