Monday, September 30, 2019

Academic Skills Plus Essay

Atwood writes: â€Å"What I mean by ‘science fiction’ is those books that descend from H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, which treats of an invasion by tentacled, blood-sucking Martians shot to Earth in metal canisters – things that could not possibly happen – whereas, for me, â€Å"speculative fiction† means plots that descend from Jules Verne’s books about submarines and balloon travel and such – things that really could happen but just hadn’t completely happened when the authors wrote the books. I would place my own books in this second category: no Martians.† (From In other worlds, p.6) With these remarks in mind, is it useful to distinguish between science fiction and speculative fiction? In answering this question you might consider Le Guin’s suggestion that people who refer to their works as ‘speculative fiction’ rather than ‘science fiction’ are simply trying to protect themselves from some of the negative connotations associated with science fiction (see In other worlds)? Discuss in relation to at least two works. ‘Science fiction’ is often defined as a wide literary genre related to fictional stories. It contains many subgenres, such as space opera, cyberpunk, utopia, dystopia, alternative histories and speculative fiction. Although there are an extensive number of subgenres, some writers, as Margaret Atwood, have been trying to differentiate ‘speculative fiction’ from ‘science fiction’. Maybe this wideness of subgenres existing under the genre ‘science fiction’ is exactly the reason why Atwood found interesting to present this differentiation. When we consider science fiction stories, many different things can came up to our mind, such as aliens, intergalactic travel, artificial intelligence and utopian (or dystopian) societies. Considering that, as we can notice in these examples, these topics can differ a lot from each other and it might be understandable that Atwood  wanted to differentiate (more than just defining different subgenres) the kind of fiction related to more ‘plausible’ things (things that could really happen, as she says). Definitely, ‘speculative fiction’ books have a completely different scenario from cyberpunk, aliens or space opera works and this could awake a desire to disconnect them in a more significantly manner. However, it is possible to affirm that this distinction between ‘science’ and ‘speculative fiction’ is not useful and that there is no reason for making it, especially considering that speculative fiction is just one more subgenre of science fiction. This thesis will be supported by a number of points presented throughout this essay. Firstly, it will be argued that the subgenre ‘speculative fiction’ fits perfectly into the definitions and requisites related to ‘science fiction’. Secondly, it will be discussed that Atwood’s definition of ‘speculative fiction’ is vague and can change according to interpretation, and also that it can be used to define as speculative fiction other books that she clearly had classified as belonging to ‘science fiction’. Thereby, her definition can be seen as not clear, which makes it not useful at all. Finally, it will be presented that Atwood seems to reinforce this division specially because distinguishing ‘speculative fiction’ from ‘science fiction’ is convenient for her. There are some evidences for that, for example, Le Guin once said Atwood was trying to protect herself from negative connotations associated with ‘science fiction’. This is even noticeable considering that many of her attempts to define the genre contained irony and clichà ©s. Firstly, it will be discussed that ‘speculative fiction’ fits perfectly into the definitions and requisites related to the ‘science fiction’ subgenres, which makes unnecessary and not useful the distinction between them. It was stated before that ‘science fiction’ has a big number of subgenres and it is clear that they differ considerably from each other. However, despite their singularities, all of them have one kind of cohesive element in common, which brings each subgenre to be defined as part of the genre ‘science fiction’. To define this common element noticed in all the science fiction subgenres, it is useful to consider two Suvin’s definitions about science fiction: â€Å"SF is, then, a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition,  and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author’s empirical environme nt† (Suvin 1979, p. 7) and â€Å"Science Fiction is distinguished by the narrative dominance or hegemony of a fictional ‘novum’ (novelty, innovation) validated by cognitive logic† (Suvin 1979, p. 63). Considering these two definitions, it is possible to affirm then that the necessary and sufficient conditions to identify one science fiction work are: the presence of a ‘novum’ and the presence of a ‘cognitive logic’, the logical consistency which makes the ‘novum’ become part of our knowledge about real things. With this in mind, we can analyse the book The Handmaid’s Tale from Atwood. She clearly have classified this book as not being ‘science fiction’, however, it is easy to identify the ‘novum’ and also the ‘cognitive logic’ in her book. The ‘novum’ is represented by the whole system of political organization in the Republic of Gilead described on the book and the ‘cognitive logic’ is given by some similarities that can be noticed between our society and the society described on the book. In the same way, for the book of H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, we can also identify the ‘novum’, which is given by the Martians and their technology; and the ‘cognitive logic’, given by the similarities existing between both societies. Thus, it can be affirmed that both books The Handmaid’s Tale and The War of the World belongs to the genre ‘science fiction’, contradicting Atwood’s previous proposition. This proves that although Atwood’s book can be classified as ‘speculative fiction’, it truly belongs to ‘science fiction’, leading us to verify again that ‘speculative fiction’ is just one more subgenre of ‘science fiction’. It makes clear then that the division between ‘science’ and ‘speculative’ fiction is not useful and not justifiable. Secondly, it will be presented that Atwood’s definition of ‘speculative fiction’ is imprecise and also can be used to define as speculative fiction other books that were categorized as ‘science fiction’ by her. In order to illustrate these points, we will analyse Atwood (2011) definition about ‘speculative fiction’ as â€Å"things that really could happen but just hadn’t completely happened when the authors wrote the books.† This is a vague and inaccurate idea. It could encompass different definitions because the range of things that could really happen is highly dependent of each person’s  beliefs and ideas, what makes this definition extremely subjective. Also, with just a few exceptions, it is not possible to say for sure what is and what is not going to happen. Besides, Atwood even gives us another definition: â€Å"Oryx and Crake is not science fiction. Science fiction is when you have chemicals and rockets.† (Watts 2003, p. 3). Considering both definitions given by her, it could be understood that she considers rockets and chemicals as things that really could not happen, as they belong to science fiction. However, it is known that rockets and chemicals are not things impossible to happen, especially because nowadays we can see some examples of them. Both definitions become contradictory then. Considering her first definition, books about this theme would be classified as speculative fiction; however, she decided to use these two themes to exemplify ‘science fiction’. Atwood’s definitions about ‘speculative fiction’ are imprecise, therefore, what is the purpose in using an imprecise and cloudy definition? It is simply not useful to distinguish ‘science’ from ‘speculative fictionâ €™ then. Thirdly, it will be presented that Atwood seems to reinforce this division specially because distinguishing ‘speculative fiction’ from ‘science fiction’ is convenient for her. Le Guin (2009) states that Atwood was trying to protect herself from negative connotations associated with science fiction and also â€Å"from being relegated to a genre still shunned by hidebound readers, reviewers and prize-awarders†. Considering Le Guin’s remarks, it is possible to observe that ‘science fiction’ was not a literary genre with considerable prestige in the intellectual audience. This could reduce her reputation on the high literary society. One possible reason for ‘science fiction’ being underestimated is that science fiction could be related to some works produced for mass audience like Star Trek and Dr Who and intellectuals would associate her books to these works. Then it would be interesting for her to dissociate the connecti on between her books and the genre ‘science fiction’ once it was not so appreciated by the intellectual audience. And this is also noticed by considering that some of her remarks about ‘science fiction’ contains irony, as she frequently uses clichà ©s to refer about it, such as ‘rockets’, ‘chemicals’, ‘blood-sucking Martians’, ‘talking squids in outer space’, and ‘skin-tight clothing’. Thus, it is possible to verify why Atwood reinforces the division between ‘speculative’ and ‘science’ fiction. And  considering her reasons we can see that they are not justifiable and strong enough to make the distinction between ‘speculative’ and ‘science fiction’ useful. Finally, this essay discussed a number of points in order to support the thesis that the distinction between ‘speculative’ and ‘science’ fiction is not useful. Firstly, it was stated that although it may be hard to define some literary genres it is noticeable that ‘speculative ficti on’ fits perfectly in most of definitions of science fiction, making it a subgenre only. Secondly, it was presented that Atwood’s definition about ‘speculative fiction’ is vague and could classify as ‘speculative fiction’ some books that she clearly classified as ‘science fiction’. Thirdly, it was discussed that is convenient for her to separate ‘speculative fiction’ from ‘science fiction’ since the genre of ‘science fiction’ was not so appreciated by reviewers and prize awarders and was associated to some mass audience works. She does not want to be linked to this image so she tries to put her works under a different literary classification. This point shows us clearly that there is no consistent and general reason for her to do the distinction. In conclusion, this essay illustrated that is not useful to distinguish between ‘science fiction’ and ‘speculative fiction’ and the reason for this was explained by all of the arguments stated previously. References Atwood, M 1985, The Handmaid’s Tale, Anchor Books, New York. Atwood, M 2011, In Other Worlds – SF and the Human Imagination, Doubleday. Le Guin, U 2009, ‘The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood’, The Guardian, 29 August. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/aug/29/margaret-atwood-year-of-flood Suvin, D 1979, Metamorphoses Of Science Fiction, Yale University Press, New Haven Watts, P 2003, ‘Margaret Atwood and the Hierarchy of Contempt’, On Spec, vol. 15, no. 2, summer, pp. 3-5. Wells, H 1898, The War of the World, New York Review Books, New York.

Sunday, September 29, 2019

Humanism in Renaissance Art

The Renaissance, occurring between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, was a period of great rebirth. Humanism, an important part of the Renaissance, brought about more color, perspective, and realism within the artistic community. A few aspects of humanism include individualism and Greece-Roman influences. Humanist ideals manifested themselves in works of Renaissance art such as Michelangelo Sistine Chapel and his David sculpture, as well as Repeal's School of Athens. Individualism emerged in the works of Michelangelo along with numerous other Italian artists of the time.In Michelangelo Sistine Chapel painting, each of the over one hundred people depicted has its own distinct facial features. Prior to the Renaissance, artists would replicate the same prosaic face onto all of the people in a large group. However, Michelangelo preferred to distinguish every individual figure present. He also ventured so far as to include a depiction of God in the form of he paintings benefactor, Pope Julius II. The characteristics of individualism repeatedly appear in the works of Italian Renaissance artists. The prevalence of humanist ideals is also present through the inclusion of Greek and Roman themes.The statue of David by Michelangelo was a sculpture created between 1501 and 1504 featuring a nude male representing the biblical hero David. Davit's contrasts pose is the Renaissance interpretation of the common Greek theme of a casually standing heroic figure. Another ancient Greece-Roman theme represented in the statue is the idea of a biblical hero depicted as a supreme athletic embodiment. Additionally, Repeal's School of Athens, painted between 1 509 and 1 510, conveys classical Greek and Roman ideals. Aristotle and Plato, well known Greek philosophers, serve as the central focus of the scene.Furthermore, the building portrayed in the painting has the rounded appearance and incorporation of columns used commonly in Romanesque architecture. Also, there are two statue s visible in the background of the painting: one is of the Greek god Apollo, the god of light and cheery, and the second is of the Roman goddess Minerva, the goddess of wisdom. A myriad of Italian artists were influenced by the humanist ideals of the great thinkers. The likes of Michelangelo and Raphael used these principles of the great Renaissance humanists to advance their artwork. Humanism in Renaissance Art By illegible

Saturday, September 28, 2019

Entrepreneurial Leadership Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Entrepreneurial Leadership - Coursework Example This essay describes the entrepreneurial leadership, that helps to grow our society. It involves instilling the confidence to take risks, initiative, responsibility and creativity. Case, Kouzes and Drucker recognized the importance and type of approach individuals need in pursuing entrepreneurial leadership. We will examine these three different theories/ philosophies and the highlighted components, which ultimately will formulate a new definition of entrepreneurial leadership. Additionally, entrepreneurs can access a wide pool of resources accessible via the website SCORE and Small Business Administration (SBA). Moreover, we will discuss the Small Business Administration, which provides useful information to entrepreneurs that are beneficial, especially to business persons just starting. Large and small businesses have access to online tools and resources on the SCORE and Small Business Administration website. The most resourceful one is the workshops geared towards building a busin ess plan. A business plan plays numerous roles, here are the following: demonstrates to entrepreneurs the feasibility of starting a business, demonstrate the tools needed to launch the business, it will highlight the cost of starting, it can open doors to funding agencies and individuals, for example, investors and it will show the intended customers or audience. Hence, all other important practices that come into play; such as, coaching, team building and motivating will fail if there is no solid plan.

Friday, September 27, 2019

How did Plato and Aristotle differ in the way they believed the mind Essay

How did Plato and Aristotle differ in the way they believed the mind should perceive reality - Essay Example In fact we are only describing our image of reality. The materiality we observe, the solidness we feel, the whole of the real world that we know, are, like color, sound, smell, and all the other qualities we experience, qualities manifesting in the mind. This is the startling conclusion we are forced to acknowledge; the stuff of our world-the world we know and appear to live within-is not matter, but mind (Russell). While psychology is interested in the nature of humanity, in understanding how human beings function, psychology is by no means the only field of inquiry that seeks answers to the puzzles of human nature.The earliest roots of the modern discipline of psychology can be traced to two different approaches to human behavior. Philosophy is a means of exploring and understanding various aspects of the nature of the world in general - including human nature. Philosophy operates primarily through introspection - the self-examination ofideas and inner experiences. The second field from which psychology derives is physiology- the scientific study of living organisms and of life sustaining processes and functions. Plato (428-348 B.C.) and Aristotle (384- 322 B.C.) also believed that the mind was to be found within the body. Plato located it in the brain and Aristotle placed it in the heart. Plato and Aristotle had a profound effect on modern thinking not only in psychology but also in many fie lds. With regard to psychology they particularly impacted three areas: the relationship between mind and body, the use of observation versus introspection as a means of discovering truth, the question of what is the original source of our ideas (Sternberg as quoted by Griffin, 2004). Plato's theory of representation is substantially different from Aristotle's, for whom some sensations are objective. Reason for Aristotle need only distinguish between accurate and inaccurate sensory images in order to gain access to the real outside world. For Plato no sensory evidence is objective. Reality is only within the inner, ideal, remembered world. Plato and Aristotle had different views on the nature of reality.Plato had a very different attitude towards representation than Aristotle. Plato believed that reality

Thursday, September 26, 2019

Globel health presentation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Globel health presentation - Essay Example In 1978, the Alma-Ata declaration developed a global policy for health, which was to be realized by the year 2000. In this global policy, a universal primary health care system based on acceptable and practical methods was adopted. This was to involve the people and be affordable in different countries. This was adopted by most countries, except some capitalistic countries. In developing countries, this was faced with a number of obstacles, including political instability, poor economy, and emerging diseases. WHO is a major player in implementing the Alma Ata declaration. The development of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) helped in propagation of global policy. Today, different studies show that a health system comprising primary care is likely to deliver better health care. However, it is impossible for one heath policy to apply to the whole world. This is because of the difficulty in formulating uniform health interventions, which target a great number of people and different key groups with varying risk factors. These also live in different environments. Maternal and child health are critical in the global policy. Cost-effective interventions were identified, but the evidence on how these could reach the vulnerable groups was not established. Generally, the Alma Ata declaration is an unfinished business. However, it has been influential in responding to dynamic health issues across the globe, and so is a potential for health developments. The World Health Organization has a global policy of improving the quality of health, developing healthy lifestyles for all people, alleviating health risks, and being responsive to the determinants of health involved. The WHO public policies of health are age-and gender-sensitive, which will facilitate the empowerment of communities, self-care, and health protection, while cooperating with its different partners. On biological weapons, the

Macro analysis of Pulp Fiction (1994) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Macro analysis of Pulp Fiction (1994) - Essay Example Thus the movie viewer knows something is about to happen, probably a "hit." And from the way these two wiseguys talk, the viewer knows they are cold killers, professionals, so whoever is going to get "whacked" are in for it. At an apartment building, they go up the elevator and end up in front of a door--but theyre too early. So they "hang back." Finally the time arrives to execute their mission. They enter the apartment, question the inhabitants, fetch some precious suitcase, then shoot the living daylights out of their targets. Even in the hands of a less creative director, the interesting-ness of this scenes plot (written by Tarantino and Roger Avery) could provide passably entertaining fare, but under Director Tarantino, with his use of incongruous dialogue, a modern-yet-rundown-60s-type set design straight from Alfred Hitchcocks "Psycho" and the ability to elicit wonderfully different/surreal performances from his actors, the result is something entirely new, refreshing, engrossing, and enjoyable. If theres a phrase that captures this fresh magic, it is "out-of-placedness." The films dialogue is "out of place," the scenes are "out-of-place" in a linear sequence, the characters are "out-of-place." The rich dialogue would be more likely be overheard at a geek convention, the movies scenes are non-linear and interwoven like an Escher painting, the characters with their strange mannerisms and interest in pop culture, though realistic and very human, seem to exist only in a world all their own. As a show of his talent, Tarantino has made all this work. The movie viewer, expecting the tension, the drama and suspense of the Crime & Gangster genre and the mood of film noir, is not disappointed because Tarantino shows respect for the genre and the noir style. "Pulp Fiction" is never campy or over the top. Director Tarantino has made sure his actors all perform their lines and actions as grittily realistic as possible. The movie does not parody nor

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Internet Marketing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 1

Internet Marketing - Essay Example Customer today has a varying need with some needing more human interaction for customer interaction while others may value price and variety of selection. The gap in customer experience is more likely to be a result of technology bumps. You see, no matter how good and efficient technology is in facilitating transaction and even lowering cost, it cannot replace human interaction. Human interaction is the bedrock of most customer experience where the customer comes face to face with another human being who attends to his or her need as a customer. In a technology base business, it is often assumed that customer has already a working knowledge of what he or she needs or wants because there is little if any human interaction that will be extended to assist him or her in the purchase. This may be inimical to customers who need assistance to what they will buy. Customers who know what to buy and are familiar with the product, will be less affected by the absence of customer experience as long as the product that he or she need is available at a price that is

Monday, September 23, 2019

Enzymes lab report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Enzymes - Lab Report Example Enzymes can be defined as biological molecules that catalyze metabolic reactions that sustain life. Enzymes are made of a complex protein and catalyze specific chemical changes within the body of animals and plants such as digestion of food to produce nutrients for the living organism thus the activity of all enzymes are controlled by the enzymes. Enzymes exhibit three major characteristics: increase rate of reaction, act specifically only in one substrate to produce products and can be regulated from a level of high activity to low activity and vice versa. This can be achieved by regulating certain factors affecting enzyme activity such as substrate concentration, pH, enzyme concentration and temperature (Bettelheim, et al, 2007). Lactase is a digestive enzyme that catalyzes the breakdown of lactose, a disaccharide sugar into simple sugars that can easily be digested. Lactose structure is made up of two rings which require a lot of energy to be broken down into two molecules of simple sugars. Lactose enzyme catalyzes this reaction by reducing the amount of energy required for the hydrolysis of lactose into two molecules of monosaccharide (Jones et al 2013). Lactase is an essential enzyme for mammals necessary to breakdown lactose into simple sugars that can easily be absorbed, thus in lactating animals, this enzyme is available. However, as human beings grow older, they lose their ability to produce lactase enzyme, a condition often referred to as lactose intolerant. Many biotechnology companies have come up with high quantities of lactase enzyme which is used by lactose intolerant individuals. In this regard, lactase enzyme is added into milk thus lactose is predigested before ingestion. In the definition of enzyme above, we mentioned that enzymes are proteins hence just like other proteins; temperatures are likely to affect them. According to (), high temperatures

Sunday, September 22, 2019

Did the history of the People's Republic after the 1949 fulfil or Essay

Did the history of the People's Republic after the 1949 fulfil or depart from Mao's promises before 1949 - Essay Example This further resumed the civil war in China, after which the war restarted only in 1946, a year after the conflict with Japan. The war ceased in 1950, and the Republic of China was under the jurisdiction of the islands of Taiwan, Quemoy, Penghu as well as several other outlying areas. Mao Zedong was commonly regarded as Chairman Mao, who was a Chinese communist, revolutionary and a political theorist. He is known as the father of People’s Republic of China since its foundation in 1949. He ruled the nation as the chairman of the Communist Party of China until his death. Here the topic under discussion is the changes that were brought about in China during Mao’s period, after the Chinese revolution of 1949. There existed some inequalities in PRC due to the dissimilarities between the Mao period and the reform eras. To know the underlying nature of the Chinese society, one needs to understand China’s transition into the present era after Mao’s period. This ch ange was brought in its due effect after the era of Mao. Analysis: The changes that took place during Mao’s rule were based on the economy of China. There was the involvement of foreign capital in China from economic zones such as southern and eastern coasts. There was a connection of the part of China in terms of family and cultural relationships to other countries like Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. During this time, the economy of Asia was growing fast and starting to play a more important role all over the world. This was one of the advantages of China; this led to the economic reforms in the country. China took its steps for development through various fields such as agriculture in the private sector, independence in the non-state sector in industry, transport and construction, which was in crisis during the USSR times. There arose some problems in the economy. â€Å"There has been a tendency for cycles of economic boom followed by centrally – induced restraint , but these have not called the whole project into question† (Bowles et al. 70). Even if there were problems in China, there developed some reform programs such as agricultural reforms in 1978, the industrial, commercial and urban reforms in 1984 and again the coastal strategy reforms in 1978. Some legal facilities were provided in order to surpass all the rights and duties when the economic policies were being developed in China. It was the situation of flexibility in the rules rather than the communist regime. In Mao’s rule there were limitations to implement rules and regulations over the labourers in the aspects of wage rates, trade unions and working conditions. This raised market oriented businesses in the economy, and the Cultural Revolution resulted in the independence of China from other foreign countries. The banks in China followed liberalization, and authoritarianism was not acceptable anymore in the Chinese society. In this era, discontent with socialism ha d started to grow. Chinese economy survived after the Cultural Revolution of 1966 by the implementation of Five Year Plan; however, this revolution overwhelmed the political system of China, and as a result, chaos spread. â€Å"Two years after the Cultural Revolution ended in October 1976, the principal survivor of that cataclysm, onetime CCP general Secretary Deng Xiaoping, initiated

Saturday, September 21, 2019

Creative Writing Essay Example for Free

Creative Writing Essay Specific poetic forms have been developed by many cultures. In more developed, closed or received poetic forms, the rhyming scheme, meter and other elements of a poem are based on sets of rules, ranging from the relatively loose rules that govern the construction of an elegy to the highly formalized structure of the ghazal or villanelle. Described below are some common forms of poetry widely used across a number of languages. Additional forms of poetry may be found in the discussions of poetry of particular cultures or periods and in the glossary. Sonnet Among the most common forms of poetry through the ages is the sonnet, which by the 13th century was a poem of fourteen lines following a set rhyme scheme and logical structure. By the 14th century, the form further crystallized under the pen of Petrarch, whose sonnets were later translated in the 16th century by Sir Thomas Wyatt, who is credited with introducing the sonnet form into English literature. A sonnets first four lines typically introduce the topic. A sonnet usually follows an a-b-a-b rhyme pattern. The sonnets conventions have changed over its history, and so there are several different sonnet forms. Traditionally, in sonnets English poets use iambic pentameter, the Spenserian and Shakespearean sonnets being especially notable. In the Romance languages, the hendecasyllable and Alexandrine are the most widely used meters, though the Petrarchan sonnet has been used in Italy since the 14th century. Sonnets are particularly associated with love poetry, and often use a poetic diction heavily based on vivid imagery, but the twists and turns associated with the move from octave to sestet and to final couplet make them a useful and dynamic form for many subjects.] Shakespeares sonnets are among the most famous in English poetry, with 20 being included in the Oxford Book of English Verse. Shi (poetry) Shi (traditional Chinese: è © ©; simplified Chinese: è ¯â€"; pinyin: shÄ «; Wade-Giles: shih) Is the main type of Classical Chinese poetry.Within this form of poetry the most important variations are folk song styled verse (yuefu), old style verse (gushi), modern style verse (jintishi). In all cases, rhyming is obligatory. The Yuefu is a folk ballad or a poem written in the folk ballad style, and the number of lines and the length of the lines could be irregular. For the other variations of shi poetry, generally either a four line (quatrain, or jueju) or else an eight line poem is normal; either way with the even numbered lines rhyming. The line length is scanned by according number of characters (according to the convention that one character equals one syllable), and are predominantly either five or seven characters long, with a caesura before the final three syllables. The lines are generally end-stopped, considered as a series of couplets, and exhibit verbal parallelism as a key poetic device. ]The old style verse (gushi) is less formally strict than the jintishi, or regulated verse, which, despite the name new style verse actually had its theoretical basis laid as far back to Shen Yue, in the 5th or 6th century, although not considered to have reached its full development until the time of Chen Ziang (661-702) A good example of a poet known for his gushi poems is Li Bai. Among its other rules, the jintishi rules regulate the tonal variations within a poem, including the use of set patterns of the four tones of Middle Chinese The basic form of jintishi (lushi) has eight lines in four couplets, with parallelism between the lines in the second and third couplets. The couplets with parallel lines contain contrasting content but an identical grammatical relationship between words. Jintishi often have a rich poetic diction, full of allusion, and can have a wide range of subject, including history and politics. One of the masters of the form was Du Fu, who wrote during the Tang Dynasty (8th century). Villanelle The villanelle is a nineteen-line poem made up of five triplets with a closing quatrain; the poem is characterized by having two refrains, initially used in the first and third lines of the first stanza, and then alternately used at the close of each subsequent stanza until the final quatrain, which is concluded by the two refrains. The remaining lines of the poem have an a-b alternating rhyme.The villanelle has been used regularly in the English language since the late 19th century by such poets as Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden,and Elizabeth Bishop. Tanka Tanka is a form of unrhymed Japanese poetry, with five sections totalling 31 onji (phonological units identical to morae), structured in a 5-7-5 7–7 pattern.There is generally a shift in tone and subject matter between the upper 5-7-5 phrase and the lower 7-7 phrase. Tanka were written as early as the Nara period by such poets as Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, at a time when Japan was emerging from a period where much of its poetry followed Chinese form. Tanka was originally the shorter form of Japanese formal poetry, and was used more heavily to explore personal rather than public themes. By the 13th century, tanka had become the dominant form of Japanese poetry, and it is still widely written today. Haiku Haiku is a popular form of unrhymed Japanese poetry, which evolved in the 17th century from the hokku, or opening verse of a renku. Generally written in a single vertical line, the haiku contains three sections totalling 17 onji, structured in a 5-7-5 pattern. Traditionally, haiku contain a kireji, or cutting word, usually placed at the end of one of the poems three sections, and a kigo, or season-word. The most famous exponent of the haiku was Matsuo BashÃ…  (1644–1694). An example of his writing: Ã¥ ¯Å'Ã¥ £ «Ã£  ®Ã© ¢ ¨Ã£â€šâ€žÃ¦â€°â€¡Ã£  «Ã£  ®Ã£ â€ºÃ£  ¦Ã¦ ±Å¸Ã¦Ë† ¸Ã¥Å"Ÿç” £ fuji no kaze ya oogi ni nosete Edo miyage the wind of Mt. Fuji Ive brought on my fan! a gift from Edo Ode Odes were first developed by poets writing in ancient Greek, such as Pindar, and Latin, such as Horace. Forms of odes appear in many of the cultures that were influenced by the Greeks and Latins.The ode generally has three parts: a strophe, an antistrophe, and an epode. The antistrophes of the ode possess similar metrical structures and, depending on the tradition, similar rhyme structures. In contrast, the epode is written with a different scheme and structure. Odes have a formal poetic diction, and generally deal with a serious subject. The strophe and antistrophe look at the subject from different, often conflicting, perspectives, with the epode moving to a higher level to either view or resolve the underlying issues. Odes are often intended to be recited or sung by two choruses (or individuals), with the first reciting the strophe, the second the antistrophe, and both together the epode.Over time, differing forms for odes have developed with considerable variations in form and structure, but generally showing the original influence of the Pindaric or Horatian ode. One non-Western form which resembles the ode is the qasida in Persian poetry. Ghazal The ghazal (also ghazel, gazel, gazal, or gozol) is a form of poetry common in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Urdu and Bengali poetry. In classic form, the ghazal has from five to fifteen rhyming couplets that share a refrain at the end of the second line. This refrain may be of one or several syllables, and is preceded by a rhyme. Each line has an identical meter. The ghazal often reflects on a theme of unattainable love or divinity. As with other forms with a long history in many languages, many variations have been developed, including forms with a quasi-musical poetic diction in Urdu. Ghazals have a classical affinity with Sufism, and a number of major Sufi religious works are written in ghazal form. The relatively steady meter and the use of the refrain produce an incantatory effect, which complements Sufi mystical themes well. Among the masters of the form is Rumi, a 13th-century Persian poet who lived in Konya, in present-day Turkey. Genres In addition to specific forms of poems, poetry is often thought of in terms of different genres and subgenres. A poetic genre is generally a tradition or classification of poetry based on the subject matter, style, or other broader literary characteristics. Some commentators view genres as natural forms of literature. Others view the study of genres as the study of how different works relate and refer to other works. Narrative poetry Narrative poetry is a genre of poetry that tells a story. Broadly it subsumes epic poetry, but the term narrative poetry is often reserved for smaller works, generally with more appeal to human interest. Narrative poetry may be the oldest type of poetry. Many scholars of Homer have concluded that his Iliad and Odyssey were composed from compilations of shorter narrative poems that related individual episodes. Much narrative poetry—such as Scottish and English ballads, and Baltic and Slavic heroic poems—is performance poetry with roots in a preliterate oral tradition. It has been speculated that some features that distinguish poetry from prose, such as meter, alliteration and kennings, once served as memory aids for bards who recited traditional tales. Notable narrative poets have included Ovid, Dante, Juan Ruiz, Chaucer, William Langland, Luà ­s de Camà µes, Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, Robert Burns, Fernando de Rojas, Adam Mickiewicz, Alexander Pushkin, Edgar Allan P oe and Alfred Tennyson. Epic poetry Epic poetry is a genre of poetry, and a major form of narrative literature. This genre is often defined as lengthy poems concerning events of a heroic or important nature to the culture of the time. It recounts, in a continuous narrative, the life and works of a heroic or mythological person or group of persons.] Examples of epic poems are Homers Iliad and Odyssey, Virgils Aeneid, the Nibelungenlied, Luà ­s de Camà µes Os Lusà ­adas, the Cantar de Mio Cid, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Mahabharata, Valmikis Ramayana, Ferdowsis Shahnama, Nizami (or Nezami)s Khamse (Five Books), and the Epic of King Gesar. While the composition of epic poetry, and of long poems generally, became less common in the west after the early 20th century, some notable epics have continued to be written. Derek Walcott won a Nobel prize to a great extent on the basis of his epic, Omeros. Verse drama and dramatic verse, Theatre of ancient Greece, Sanskrit drama, Chinese Opera, and Noh Dramatic poetry is drama written in verse to be spoken or sung, and appears in varying, sometimes related forms in many cultures. Greek tragedy in verse dates to the 6th century B.C., and may have been an influence on the development of Sanskrit drama, just as Indian drama in turn appears to have influenced the development of the bianwen verse dramas in China, forerunners of Chinese Opera.East Asian verse dramas also include Japanese Noh. Examples of dramatic poetry in Persian literature include Nizamis two famous dramatic works, Layla and Majnun and Khosrow and Shirin, Ferdowsis tragedies such as Rostam and Sohrab, Rumis Masnavi, Gorganis tragedy of Vis and Ramin, and Vahshis tragedy of Farhad. Satirical Poetry Poetry can be a powerful vehicle for satire. The Romans had a strong tradition of satirical poetry, often written for political purposes. A notable example is the Roman poet Juvenals satires.[128] The same is true of the English satirical tradition. John Dryden (a Tory), the first Poet Laureate, produced in 1682 Mac Flecknoe, subtitled A Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet, T.S. (a reference to Thomas Shadwell).Another master of 17th-century English satirical poetry was John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester.Satirical poets outside England include Polands Ignacy Krasicki, Azerbaijans Sabir and Portugals Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage. Lyric poetry Lyric poetry is a genre that, unlike epic and dramatic poetry, does not attempt to tell a story but instead is of a more personal nature. Poems in this genre tend to be shorter, melodic, and contemplative. Rather than depicting characters and actions, it portrays the poets own feelings, states of mind, and perceptions.Notable poets in this genre include John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Antonio Machado. Elegy An elegy is a mournful, melancholy or plaintive poem, especially a lament for the dead or a funeral song. The term elegy, which originally denoted a type of poetic meter (elegiac meter), commonly describes a poem of mourning. An elegy may also reflect something that seems to the author to be strange or mysterious. The elegy, as a reflection on a death, on a sorrow more generally, or on something mysterious, may be classified as a form of lyric poetry. Notable practitioners of elegiac poetry have included Propertius, Jorge Manrique, Jan Kochanowski, Chidiock Tichborne, Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, John Milton, Thomas Gray, Charlotte Turner Smith, William Cullen Bryant, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Evgeny Baratynsky, Alfred Tennyson, Walt Whitman, Louis Gallet, Antonio Machado, Juan Ramà ³n Jimà ©nez, William Butler Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Virginia Woolf. Fable The fable is an ancient literary genre, often (though not invariably) set in verse. It is a succinct story that features anthropomorphized animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that illustrate a moral lesson (a moral). Verse fables have used a variety of meter and rhyme patterns. Notable verse fabulists have included Aesop, Vishnu Sarma, Phaedrus, Marie de France, Robert Henryson, Biernat of Lublin, Jean de La Fontaine, Ignacy Krasicki, Fà ©lix Marà ­a de Samaniego, Tomà ¡s de Iriarte, Ivan Krylov and Ambrose Bierce. Prose poetry Prose poetry is a hybrid genre that shows attributes of both prose and poetry. It may be indistinguishable from the micro-story (a.k.a. the short short story, flash fiction). While some examples of earlier prose strike modern readers as poetic, prose poetry is commonly regarded as having originated in 19th-century France, where its practitioners included Aloysius Bertrand, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud and Stà ©phane Mallarmà ©.Since the late 1980s especially, prose poetry has gained increasing popularity, with entire journals, such as The Prose Poem: An International Journal,Contemporary Haibun Onlinedevoted to that genre. Speculative poetry Speculative poetry, also known as fantastic poetry, (of which weird or macabre poetry is a major subclassification), is a poetic genre which deals thematically with subjects which are beyond reality, whether via extrapolation as in science fiction or via weird and horrific themes as in horror fiction. Such poetry appears regularly in modern science fiction and horror fiction magazines. Edgar Allan Poe is sometimes seen as the father of speculative poetry.

Friday, September 20, 2019

The Gay Rights Movement And Freedom

The Gay Rights Movement And Freedom Gay rights movement helped a lot of people feel free to be them-selves. Even though gay people are often frowned upon, gay people are just like everyone else. They are human beings wanting to be loved and cared for by another. According to Stacy, It is also important to define the gay rights movement as a whole. Research shows that The gay rights movement comprises a collection of loosely aligned civil rights groups, human rights groups, support groups and political activists seeking acceptance, tolerance and equality for (homosexual, bisexual), and transgender people, and related causes (Shaneyfelt, 2009). Although it is typically referred to as the gay rights movement, members also promote the rights of groups of individuals who do not necessarily identify as being gay (http://www.aboutsociology.com/sociology/Gay_rights_movement). First of all, as you trace the history of this pivotal movement and devise a timeline, you might credit that the modern gay rights movement is considered by many critics to have originated with the Stonewall riots in New York City in 1969 (http://www.pbs.org/niot/get_involved/Guide2/study_guide_II_final_23.html). Please note how the Stonewall riots marked the most dramatic event in the history of American homosexuality The riots made a major statement in terms of law enforcement. Because police raids on gay bars were routine, the riots protested these selective actions, made it into national headlines and inspired resistance to such police raids in other cities This resistance caused more activism to stir (Shaneyfelt, 2009). According to Stacy, As you also look at why Stonewall was so vital for gay rights, please note how it also marked the first inter-generational gap in the homosexual community and the beginning of the break between gay society and lesbian society. Previous generations of homosexual men were more sexually conservative and preferred to keep their sexuality to themselves, the new generation was promiscuous and vocal. Lesbian society, like older gay male society, preferred to be more sexually conservative and private, so a gap began to emerge between the two groups (Shaneyfelt, 2009). As you then examine the other implications on life currently in the 21st century, you might claim how changes involve activist groups that are advocates for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, trans-gendered people, etc. Research shows that agencies and task forces such as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), founded in 1973, which has worked to combat anti-gay violence and to improve the legal status of gay men and lesbians in the United States (The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force). Besides advocacy groups, the gay rights movement of the 60s also impacts currently life in the legal realm. For example, important advances in gay rights have been made since the 1960s in term of legislation. Research shows how Several states have repealed laws that made homosexual acts illegal, despite the fact that in 1986 the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of such laws. Several states have also passed laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing, and other areas (The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force). As you further correlate how the sexual revolution in the 1960s in America played a role in empowering gay rights, you might look at how a change in the psychology of gay society had become gay militancy by 1969, much as the feminist and black movements had transformed (Shaneyfelt, 2009). Again, as you look historically and move beyond this event, you might suggest how In 1970, the gay power movement had reached such proportions that parades were held to commemorate the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots. In the meantime, the Mattachine Society had sponsored homosexual liberation meetings and the Gay Liberation Front had been formed. The aim of the new organization was not to meekly show that homosexuals were acceptable As a result, homosexuals became increasingly organized and concentrated in cities such as New York and San Francisco (Shaneyfelt, 2009). Similarly, research in sociology also asserts that A Gay Liberation Front was active in New York in the early 1970s. In the liberal political mainstream, gays and lesbians organized the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club in San Francisco in 1971 (Walls, 2008). Just as there are many effects today from the historical movement such as pride days and parades, the 1970s also saw these types of events. Research reveals that San Franciscos Gay Freedom Day parades drew large numbers in the late 1970s, and the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights was held in October 1979 (Research in sociology also asserts that A Gay Liberation Front was active in New York in the early 1970s. In the liberal political mainstream, gays and lesbians organized the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club in San Francisco in 1971 (Walls, 2008). Other sociological effects are still felt in lobbying efforts today. Please note how the 1970s also was a time when a set of national lobbying and legal defense groups as well as a political action committee (http://www.sonoma.edu/users/w/wallsd/glbt-movement.shtml) occurred. A major goal was getting sodomy laws repealed in about half the states (Walls, 2008). A major development in the movement also occurred in the 1980s. By 1980, most large cities had at least one predominantly gay neighborhood (Shaneyfelt, 2009). These details above could justify your sociological approach. However, since you need a psychological standpoint, you might also interject how The second most dramatic event in gay American history is the AIDS epidemic which began officially in 1981 (Shaneyfelt, 2009). Although physical in nature, psychological ramifications also intertwine because many gays had to modify their philately upon sexuality. They initially vehemently protested suggestions that they should curb their sexuality or use condoms until well into 1988. By that time, their lives and political position were in extreme danger (Shaneyfelt, 2009). When looking at other historical and psychological effects, research shows how AIDS became a symbol of oppression to gays, just as sodomy laws had been. To them, society had to put huge amounts of money into the disease or it was not adequately recognizing the needs of the gay community (Shaneyfelt, 2009). By 1990, the question of what caused homosexuality surfaced once again. The first theory is that it is cause either by a twist of genetics, a birth defect, or some sort of hormonal abnormality; in other words, it is biological. The second theory is that t something about a persons socialization leads them to choose a homosexual lifestyle (Shaneyfelt, 2009). Other implications of this event for life in the 21st century also include other aspects. Legally, the movement has been successful to repeal many sodomy laws were repealed in most American states, and those that still remained were ruled unconstitutional in the June 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas. Many companies and local governments have clauses in their nondiscrimination policies that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. In some jurisdictions in the U.S., gay bashing is considered a hate crime and given a harsher penalty (About Sociology, 2010). Other sociological developments might also include same-sex marriages. Please note how The U.S. state of Massachusetts allows same-sex marriage, and the states of Connecticut, Hawaii and Vermont provide the civil union as an alternative to marriage. However, in many states, laws and constitutional amendments have been passed forbidding any recognition of same-sex marriage. Virginia law, the most far-reaching, forbids recognition of any benefits similar to those of marriage between people of the same sex (About Sociology, 2010). Gay adoption increases marks another area where you can apply psychological and sociological implications on modern life. The movement of the 1960s made these rights possible. Research shows that Recognizing that lesbians and gay men can be good parents, the vast majority of states no longer deny custody or visitation to a person based on sexual orientation. State agencies and courts now apply a best interest of the child standard to decide these cases. Under this approach, a persons sexual orientation cannot be the basis for ending or limiting parent-child relationships unless it is demonstrated that it causes harm to a child a claim that has been routinely disproved by social science research. Using this standard, more than 22 states to date have allowed lesbians and gay men to adopt children either through state-run or private adoption agencies (Overview of Lesbian and Gay Parenting, Adoption and Foster Care , 1999).

Thursday, September 19, 2019

The Early History of Golf in the U.S. Essay -- Golf Sports Athletics E

The game of golf is one of the oldest of today’s modern sports. Its exact beginnings are not known; however, some historians trace golf back to the Stone Age while others claim it originated from the â€Å"idle antics of shepherd boys knocking small stones into holes in the ground with a crook while their flocks grazed nearby† (Peper 1). Researched back to the time of the Roman Empire, it is also believed the sports-oriented Romans played a forerunner of the game of golf called paganica. This sport involved the use of a bent stick and a ball stuffed with wool played in the open countryside. Golf comes to the United Sates The legendary beginnings of golf in the United States can be traced back to the mid-1600s. One of the first published references to golf in America was in 1659 referring to the ban on golf in the streets of Albany, New York. The next substantial reference to the game comes from Charleston, North Carolina in 1786. At that time, a local Charleston newspaper ran a story about the formation of the Harleston Green Golf Club. The Harleston Green remained in operation for approximately twenty-five years, closing about the time of the War of 1812. Around the same time period, approximately1795, another golf club opened in Savannah, Georgia. References to this golf club continued until 1811 again apparently closing just before the beginning of the war. The War of 1812 served to destroy the desire to play golf. It wasn’t until the late 1870s, well after the Civil War ended, that there was a resurgence of golf in the United States. Golf fever springs up throughout the United States Charles Macdonald was an early founder of American golf. He recalled playing golf in the Chicago area as early as 1875. Another promoter of golf, a young man named Andrew Bell from Burlington, Iowa, was initially exposed to golf when he went to Scotland to attend the University of Edinburgh. Upon his return to the United States in 1883, he laid out four informal golf holes on the family farm and played a few rounds with his friends. In 1884 Colonel Hamilton Gillispie, a former Scotsman who went into the lumber business in Florida, was known to hit golf balls in a field that is now the main street of Sarasota (History of Golf 7). Also in 1884, the Oakhurst Golf Club was formed in North Carolina now famous for it’s first hole from the Club’s Homestead course, celebrated to... ...ip. Today, the USGA membership exceeds 5,500 clubs throughout the United States. Golf, being one of the oldest of today’s modern sports, thrives in popularity continuing to entice young and old, male and female, rich and poor players. Works Cited Simpson, W.G. â€Å"The Origin of Golf.† A Tribute to Golf. Ed. Thomas Stewart. Harbor Springs, Michigan: Stewart, Hunter, and Associates. 1990. 78. Golf Magazine’s Encyclopedia of Golf. The Editors of Golf Magazine. New York, NY: Harper-Collins 1993. Doyle, Kathleen. â€Å"In John Reid’s Cow Pasture.† Sports in America. Sept. 1988: 34-38. Peper, George. â€Å"The Father of American Golf.† Golf Magazine. Dec. 1995. 118. Peper, George. â€Å"Birth of the USGA.† Golf Magazine. Dec. 1994. 124. Hannigan, Frank. â€Å"The History of the game of Golf.† Golf Digest Magazine. Jan. 2000. 171. Fields, Bill. â€Å"Changing the course of history.† Golf Digest Magazine. Sept. 1999. 17. McCord, Robert, R. Golf: an album of its history. Short Hills, NJ: Burford Books. 1998. Anderson, David. The story of golf. New York: W. Morrow. 1998. Menzies, Gordon. World of golf. New York: Bantam. 1982.

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Aspects of Love in William Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet :: Romeo and Juliet Essays

Aspects of Love in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet 'Aspects of Love': Discuss the various forms of love that are present in Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". It's a clichÃÆ'Â © to say that Romeo and Juliet is the greatest love story ever told. People say this because it is the most famous love story told and the play has various aspects of love and not only one. Even the phrase 'the greatest love story ever told' was used as a tagline for the recent Baz Luhrmann film. The prologue is full of violent and negative language e.g. ancient grudge, civil blood, fatal lions, death- marked, rage. But also has words to do with love e.g. star crossed lovers. You can already tell that this is going to be a love story with trouble, worry and violence in it. The first reference to an aspect of love in this so-called "greatest love story ever told" after the Prologue is to rape and therefore lust not love. The first two characters that the audience is introduced to are Sampson and Gregory. They are vulgar and crude, making many sexual references and innuendoes. They do not see love as involving emotions or desires, but as a purely physical thing, sexual not emotional. Sampson refers to women as "weaker vessels" and tells of how he will rape the maids of the Montague household; "Women being the weaker vessels are ever thrust to the wall", "I will push Montague's men from the wall, and thrust his maids to the wall". Both Sampson and Gregory have petty and narrow perceptions of 'love'. Neither of them appears to have ever experienced true love. They talk in a crude and coarse manner and see women as objects not people. Courtly love characterises Romeo's behaviour at the start as he mopes over the unattainable Rosaline. This is only upper class and is not necessarily about love. It is really a series of expectations, aristocratic societies expected their young men to idolise a woman 'out of their league. This happens to Romeo because he is self-pitying

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

The History of the Corset Essay -- History Women Feminism

Throughout history, a person’s economic and social rank could be shown through what clothes they wore. In ancient Egypt, a person of upper class was permitted by law to wear sandals on the harsh, desert floor. Because of these laws, female-confining ideals arose. For example, the Greeks and Romans controlled the type, color, and number of undergarments worn by women and the kind of fabric dà ©cor used on them. The torso became the sculpting block of feminine beauty. This was the beginning of the corset, a restraining, essential item in the women’s attire through the 19th century. During the Renaissance period, the corset resembled a cone, as it was small at the waist and uplifting at the bosom. It extended from the underarm to just below the waist. The typical female’s corset was made stiff with metal or wood. Again, a woman of higher economical or social standing would have one made special with whalebone. During this time and through the Romantic period, a woman was put to shame if she was found absent of a corset or her waist size was not small enough. At that period in time, a 15 to 18 inch waist was acceptable. Anything exceeding those measurements was thought to be absurd. Thusly, restricting corsets were the norm and often resulted in physical deformities. For example, rib cages were often cracked or grew warped due to constricting corsets. The corset was found rigid and compressing in the 1700s. Early 1800s brought some enlightening change: Mantua dresses were m...

Irrational and Rational Decision Making

What is irrational and rational decision making? Well first to understand what each on is individually, I believe that you should know what each word means separately. So according to meriam-webster. com, rational means, â€Å"having reason or understanding† (Rational, 2009) while irrational means, â€Å"not endowed with reason or understanding. † (Irrational, 2009). Lastly but not least, from the Encarta. msn. com/dictionary, decision making, is â€Å"the process of making choices or reaching conclusions, especially on important political or business matters. † So what do all those definitions mean to you? To me, by these definitions, rational decision making is when a person has reason or understanding in reaching a certain conclusion and just the opposite of that is irrational decision making, when a person is not able to come to a conclusion without reason or understanding. The differences are clearly stated, such as not having any reasons. versus having a reason for a conclusion For example, if the tiles are muddy, the most rational thing to do is to mop the tiles. Your reason is that the tiles are muddy. I think that an irrational thing for a person to do is to sweep the tiles. If there is mud on tiles, it’s not the same as having sand on the tiles. The mud is wet therefore you would use a mop instead of a broom. With the broom, you could pick up dry particles such as sand. It would just make more sense, rather than using a broom to sweep mud when all you will be doing is pushing around something that is wet. Decision that was Once Reviewed to be â€Å"Rational† but Now is â€Å"Irrational† Back in the early 1700 and 1800’s, arranged marriages were part of the traditional and cultural beliefs that many families went through. Though arranged marriages happened in the United States, it was most likely to take place in the Southern States. Now, in the present day, though arranged marriages still happen in some cultures around the world, it is an irrational decision. (Decision, 2008) Explanation why it Would be Considered â€Å"Irrational† Today It was considered to be rational back then because it â€Å"was the thought to keep the blood lineage of an aristocratic family line to stay pure. † In order to make marriage agreements, there is sometimes certain business arrangements that were involved. Things such as, land, money, property, and or social status were used in order to make a marriage, other than what we presently do, which is to fall in love with a person. Now, in the present, most have the ability to choose the person they want to marry. (Arranged, n. d. ) Decision Theory Used I think the decision theory that was used in the original decision making is Satisficing. â€Å"The theory postulates that decision makers compare these calculations and choose the course of action that maximizes expected utility. (Plous, 1993). In the earlier years, parents of children, made the decision to arrange their future marriages in hopes of receiving or being able to make a deal with another family. They chose a path in their lives which would then satisfy their needs and wants. When doing so, their choice is far from being actually favorable. Instead of being able to marry someone you love and of your choice, back then, there were no opinions whether or not a person wanted to marry another. It was like you were born in order for the option of your parents to be able to make a deal with another family, just to get something out of having a child. Because arranged marriage is what was ideal for certain cultures, it turned into a custom that children soon taught their children and so on. Just because you were taught and brought up learning something, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s always favorable for both you and your parents. To your parents, it could mean getting money, or being richer in a way, and to you, it could mean having nothing at all, no option. You are just put in a situation where you, as a child had no say in. References Arranged Marriage. (n. d. ). Retrieved February 18, 2009, from http://www. youth information. com/Templates/Internal. sp? NodeID=90221 Decision Making. (2008). Retrieved February 18, 2009, from http://encarta. msn. com/ dictionary_1861688906/decision-making. html Irrational. (2009). Retrieved February 18, 2009, from http://www. merriamwebster. com/dictionary/irrational Rational. (2009). Retrieved February 18, 2009, from http://www. merriamwebster. com/dictionary /rational Plous, S. (1993). The psychology of judgment & decision making, New York, McGraw Hill The History of Arranged Marriages in America. (2008). Retrieved February 18, 2009, from http://www. associatedcontent. com/article/787875/the_history_of_arranged

Monday, September 16, 2019

Internet Traps and False Information Essay

Internet very popular important with everybody. Nowadays, everybody also use internet. It connect people on the world. Traditional class and internet class very diffenrent Internet is the traditional system, it will help our have more knowledge, good information, good news†¦ In the past, people used internet is the search system. It have a lot of good thing in the internet. It help we have friends , forum , search everything we want. We can know more knowledge But everything will be have negative and positive. We just know a good thing in the internet , we do not need to know a lot of bad thing on the internet . Social also have two face and internet too . It has troubles , traps †¦ we need to be thought wise, we certainly know right from wrong. Therefore , we should fully exploit the advantages of the internet, that advantage should not do bad things or negative. Internet always contains interesting things. Internet is one of the greatest inventions of human history. When old does not have internet, humans can be difficult to share the necessary information useful life, thanks to the internet, today we know a lot of things good. We need to know to take advantage of the internet to be useful, or exploitation of useful things in this life. It will help you feel better love life, more interesting things. But sometimes we take advantage of it in a bad job, bad purposes will cause the opposite effect. It makes us inadvertently lead us to wrong path that they want and go against positive thinking. If we take advantage of the bad things on the internet, it will lose the good thing is its capital. Because the internet sometimes contain false information about the problem, negative nature, does not serve the purpose well. Traditional classroom is the class just come to class and do homework, construct and develop courses. Traditional classes can help students become more active in this life. Students can hardly develop the capabilities as well as their knowledge. Traditional classroom is very limited and restrictive. It is difficult to create a sense of comfort and good environment for students to learn. It gives the students a feeling extremely uncomfortable, passive. The school on the internet is extremely beneficial, it helps us to easily absorb everything without hard working. Classroo m based courses offer more focus than online courses. In a classroom, students are forced to be quiet and listen to the teacher or their peers. They can even switch to a different tab with their favorite social network instead of what they’re supposed to be learning. the Internet  classroom is convenient for professors, too! They can give us a quiz without any paper, which can reduce the consumption of trees. At the same time, it may be easier for some teachers to make corrections or comments on student’s work on the computer. In this way, the professors can concentrate more on teaching. They don’t need to care about students’ behavior like eating, talking on the cell phone, or going to the toilet. Traditonal class makes sense to attend classes in person if you decide to live in the dorms or are an incoming freshmen who wants the real college experience. There are certainly more opportunities to join clubs, associations, or fraternities/sororities while taking classes on campus.

Sunday, September 15, 2019

Rise of Islam

Rise of Islam BY stall One of the greatest cultural spread experience in world history was the rise of Islam. Beginning in the Arabian peninsula and Middle east, It ruled over areas of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Islam was appealing to people In many different varieties of communities. It brought valuable changes as an outcome of correspondence while frequent In regards affiliating with orthodox local belief structure. Muslims urged new cultural proselytes for hundreds of years, beginning at around 700 CE.There were many conquests, far outstretched trade, and extended missionary movement. The geographical aspects of the Muslim people were fairly well accustomed by 1450 CE, which was the end of the post-classical period. Salami's spread was progressive though remarkably sudden given the substantial geography and assorted regions concerned in. So what really provoked Islam to distribute their culture throughout the globe? How did the intensity of Islam become so surreal? The answer is mi litary conquest, wide spread trade, political domination and religious ideas.A supporter of the spread of Islam was Its religious attractiveness. Islam represented the truth. They ad many fastened rules and laws. People were tempted by Islam due to peace, comfort, and security they distinguish In It. It also appealed to people that there was only one God (Allah), whom had no partner, son, companion or resemblance. The root of the word Islam Is Salem', meaning to be In peace with God. In document B (Verses from the Curran) it reads, â€Å"Those who submit to God and accept the true faith; who are devout sincere, patient, humble ,charitable, and chaste. This shows that Allah was fair to those who were fair to him, not bring unjust fairness to the people of Islam. Another cause of Salami's spread was due to their immense military force. Islam spread vastly to other cultures in a factor of military conquest, even though the religion was forbearing of other beliefs. Muslims rarely ever proceeded their religion with force unto people, commonly looking to charging a special tax on the opposition communities.The famous Jihad, or also known as the holy war recounted by the prophet Muhammad, was primarily used for defense of the faith. It was not used for forced conversion, even though there were minor exceptions. But the triumph of Muslim forces could generate a setting In which other people found It sensible to convert, or in which they were enticed to the religion plainly because of its visible power and accomplishment. During Muhammad' death in 632 CE, a large growth of Islam spread throughout the Arab's.This growth helped impel Arabs to an outpour of conquest, and military rapidly spread through the Middle East, involving the Byzantine Empire. North Africa was one untimely conquest. An unsteady median government, the caliphate, was devised for this West Asian- North African innards by Muhammad inheritors; it thrived until the thirteenth century. Political conquest was a major importance to the thriving of Islam. The Islamic government's primary aim was to Institute a truly Islamic society.Islam does not ponder society to be merely an assemblage of Individuals. Rather, It reckons that society also comprises of their social relationships and the social system In which these Individuals exist. These are perhaps the most ultimate factors of a society, as different isosceles are designated as being developed or undeveloped and complex or plain, according to edge and the structure of the overpowering political system, are all part of the compound web of social relationships that contribute to the structure of society.Therefore, an Islamic society, by visibility, is a supreme society in which social order is esteemed and managed according to fundamental Islamic benefits, teachings and rulings. Lastly, another aspect that caused the blooming of Islam was their extensive trade. The first converts were the Sudanese merchants, accompanied by a few rule rs and courtiers. The masses of rustic peasants, however, endure little grazed.In the lath century, the Lombardi interface, directed by a party of Barber nomads who were stern observers of Islamic law, gave the conversion process a new surge in the Ghana empire and past. The spread of Islam throughout the African continent was neither concurrent nor unvarying, but followed an unhurried and adaptive path. People who spoke of the Islamic religion and its ways of peace strode down the trade routes, spreading Islam to the merchants and people. In conclusion, the spread of Islam was due to the fact that they believed in peace, keeping religion stable and secure.

Saturday, September 14, 2019

Careercup Top 150 Questions

Cracking the Technical Interview by Gayle Laakmann, CareerCup. com 150 Technical Interview Questions and Solutions, written by experts. PLUS:  »  »  » Behind the scenes look at Google Microsoft, Amazon and Yahoo interviews. Interview War Stories: the view from the other side. Advice on how to approach 24 types of interview questions. Copyright Information Copyright 2009 by Gayle Laakmann All rights reserved exclusively for [email  protected] google. com www. careercup. com Table of Contents Introduction Practice Interviews. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 The Microsoft Interview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 The Amazon Interview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 The Google Interview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 The Yahoo Interview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Interview War Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Interview Questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Applied Mathematics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Arrays & Hash Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Bit Manipulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Brain Teasers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 C / C++ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Counting and Combinatorics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Database. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Debugging Existing Code. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Java. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Large Scale & Memory Limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Linked Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Low Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Matrix. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 4  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Table of ContentsChapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Object Oriented Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Probability and Randomness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Software and System Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Sorting and Searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Stacks and Queues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Threads And Locks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Trees and Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69  © 20 09 CAREERCUP 5 Practice Interviews Studying helps, but nothing can prepare you like the real thing. Each CareerCup interviewer has given over a hundred interviews at Google, Microsoft, or Amazon. To nail your interview, sit down with a trained interviewer and get their experienced feedback. See www. careercup. om/interview for more details. One Hour Interview with Real Interviewers Our interviewers will give you a real interview, just like you’d get at Google, Microsoft or Amazon. We’ll test you on the same types of questions that they do. We’ll grade you the same way they do. How can we do this? We’ve done over 100 interviews each for these companies. We’ve screened resumes. We’ve been part of their hiring committees. We know what they want. We’ll Also Give You†¦  »  »  »  »  » An . mp3 recording of your interview. Feedback on where you shined and where you struggled. Specific suggestions on how to improve.Instructions on how to approach tough problems Lessons on what interviewers look for in your code. A Typical Interview A typical interview includes a brief discussion of your resume and one or more technical questions. Each interview will do coding via a shared document. When the interview is completed, we’ll give you immediate feedback on how you did while it’s still fresh in your mind. Later that day, you’ll receive an mp3 of the interview to refresh your memory. Schedule Your Interview Today! See http://www. careercup. com/interview for pricing and details! 6  © 2009 CAREERCUP xclusively for [email  protected] google. com The Microsoft Interview Microsoft wants smart people. Geeks. People who are passionate about technology. You probably won’t be tested on the ins and outs of C++ APIs, but you will be expected to write code on the board. In a typical interview, you’ll show up at Microsoft at some time in the morning and fill out initial paper work. Youà ¢â‚¬â„¢ll have a short interview with a recruiter where he or she will give you a sample question. Be nice to your recruiters; while they may not evaluate your technical skills in depth, they can fight for you to be hired – or not.Throughout the day, you’ll move around from interviewer to interviewer, visiting each one in their office. Use this time to look around and get a feel for what the team culture. Interviewers are not allowed to share their feedback on you with other interviewers, due to concerns of bias. Nonetheless, many sources indicate that some feedback is shared. When you complete your interviews with a team, you might speak with a hiring manager. If so, that’s a great sign! It likely means that you passed the interviews with a particular team. It’s now down to the hiring manDefinitely Prepare: ager’s decision.You might get a decision that day, or it might be a week. After one week of no word from HR, send them a friendly email asking for a status update. â€Å"Why do you want to work for Microsoft? † In this question, Microsoft wants to see that you’re passionate about technology. A great answer might be, â€Å"I’ve been using Microsoft software as long as I can remember, and I’m really impressed at how Microsoft creates manages to create a product that is universally excellent. For example, I’ve been using Visual Studio recently to learn game programming, and it’s APIs are excellent. † Note how this shows a passion for technology!What’s Unique: You’ll only reach the hiring manager if you’ve done well, but if you do, that’s a great sign! [email  protected] google. com  © 2009 CAREERCUP 7 The Amazon Interview Amazon’s recruiting process usually begins with one or two phone screens in which you interview with a specific team. The engineer who interviews you will usually ask you to write simple code and read it aloud on the pho ne. They will ask a broad set of questions to explore what areas of technology you’re familiar with. Next, you fly to Seattle for four or five interviews with one or two teams which have selected you based on your resume and phone interviews.You will have to code on a whiteboard, and some interviewers will stress other skills. Interviewers are each assigned a specific area to probe and may seem very different from each other. They can not see other feedback until they have submitted their own and they are discouraged from discussing it until the hiring meeting. Amazon’s â€Å"bar raiser† interviewer is charged with keeping the interview bar high. They attend special training and will interview candidates outside their group in order to balance out the group itself.If one interview seems significantly harder and different, that’s most likely the bar raiser. This person has both significant experience with interviews Definitely Prepare: and veto power in th e hiring decision. You Amazon is a web-based company, and will meet with your recruiter at the end of the day. that means that they care about scale. Once your interviewers have entered their feedback, they will meet to discuss it. They will be the people making the hiring decision. While Amazon’s recruiters are excellent at following up with candidates, occasionally there are delays.If you haven’t heard from Amazon within a week, we recommend a friendly email. Make sure you prepare questions in â€Å"Large Scale. † You don’t need a background in distributed systems to answer these questions. Just answer the question for one system and then think, how does your solution change with multiple computers? Additionally, Amazon tends to ask a lot of questions that are based in mathematics and randomness. What’s Unique: The Bar Raiser, who is brought in from a different team to keep the bar high. 8  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com The Google InterviewThere are many scary stories floating around about Google interviews, but it’s mostly just that: stories. The interview is not terribly different from Microsoft’s or Amazon’s. However, because Google HR can be a little disorganized, we recommend being proactive in communication. A Google engineer performs the first phone screen, so expect tough technical questions. On your onsite interview, you’ll interview with four to six people, one of whom will be a lunch interviewer. Interviewer feedback is kept confidential from the other interviewers, so you can be assured that you enter each interview with blank slate.Your lunch interviewer doesn’t submit feedback, so this is a great opportunity to ask honest questions. Written feedback is submitted to a hiring committee of engineers to make a hire/no-hire recommendation. Feedback is typically broken down into four categories (Analytical Ability, Coding, Experience and Commun ication) and you are given a score from 1. 0 to 4. 0 overall. The hiring committee understands that you can’t be expected to excel in every interview, but if multiple people raise the same red flag (arrogance, poor coding skills, etc), that can disqualify you.A hiring committee typically wants to see one interviewer who is an â€Å"enthusiastic endorser. † In other words, a packet with scores of 3. 6, 3. 1, 3. 1 and 2. 6 is better than all 3. 1’s. Your phone screen is usually not a factor in the final decision. The Google hiring process can be slow. If you don’t hear back within one week, politely ask your recruiter for an update. A lack of response says nothing about your performance. Definitely Prepare: As a web-based company, Google cares about how to design scalable system. So, make sure you prepare question from â€Å"Large Scale. Additionally, many Google interviewers will ask questions involving bit shifting and Bit Manipulation, so please brush u p on these questions. What’s Different: Your interviewers do not make the hiring decision. Rather, they enter feedback which is passed to a hiring committee. The hiring committee recommends a decision which can be—though rarely is—rejected by Google executives. [email  protected] google. com  © 2009 CAREERCUP 9 The Yahoo Interview Resume Selection & Screening: While Yahoo tends to only recruit at the top 10 – 20 schools, other candidates can still get interviewed throughYahoo’s job board (or – better yet – if they can get an internal referral). If you’re one of the lucky ones selected, your interview process will start off with a phone screen. Your phone screen will be with a senior employee (tech lead, manager, etc). Onsite Interview: You will typically interview with 6 – 7 people on the same team for 45 minutes each. Each interviewer will have an area of focus. For example, one interviewer might focus on databases, while another interviewer might focus on your understanding of computer architecture.Interviews will often be composed as follows: 5 minutes: General conversation. Tell me about yourself, your projects, etc. 20 minutes: Coding question. For example, implement merge sort. 20 minutes: System design. For example, design a large distributed cache. These questions will often focus on an area from your past experience or on something your interviewer is curDefinitely Prepare: rently working on. Decision: At the end of the day, you will likely meet with a Program Manager or someone else for a general conversation (product demos, concerns about the company, your competing offers, etc).Meanwhile, your interviewers will discuss your performance and attempt to come to a decision. The hiring manager has the ultimate say and will weigh the positive feedback against the negative. If you have done well, you will often get a decision that day, but this is not always the case. There can be many rea sons that you might not be told for several days – for example, the team may feel it needs to interview several other people. Yahoo, almost as a rule, asks questions about system design, so make sure you prepare that. They want to know that you can not only write code, but that you can design software.Don’t worry if you don’t have a background in this – you can still reason your way through it! What’s Unique: Your phone interview will likely be performed by someone with more influence, such as a hiring manager. Yahoo is also unusual in that it often gives a decision (if you’re hired) on the same day. Your interviewers will discuss your performance while you meet with a final interviewer. 10  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Interview War Stories The View from the Other Side of the Front, by Peter BaileyFor the eager candidate getting ready for a big job interview, Cracking the Technical Interview is an inva luable reference, containing excellent coaching and practice material that gives you an inside edge on the interview process. However, as you go over your old data structures textbook and drill yourself with homemade discrete math flash cards, don’t make the mistake of thinking of the interview as a kind of high-pressure game show – that if you just give all the right answers to the tech questions, you too can win a shiny new career (this week, on Who Wants to be a Software Engineer? While the technical questions on computer science obviously are very important, the most important interview question is not covered in this guidebook. In fact, it’s often the single most important question in your interviewers’ minds as they grill you in that little room. Despite the questions on polymorphism and heaps and virtual machines, the question they really want an answer to is †¦ Would I have a beer with this guy? Don’t look at me like that, I’m s erious! Well, I may be embellishing a little, but hear me out.The point I’m trying to make is that interviewers, especially those that you might work with, are probably just as anxious as you are. Nonsense, you say, as a nervous young professional, checking your pants for lint while you bite your fingernails, waiting for the interview team to show up in the front lobby. After all, this is the big leagues, and these guys are just waiting for you to slip up so they can rip you apart, laugh at your shriveled corpse, and grind your career dreams to dust beneath the heels of their boots. Right? Just like pledge week, back in freshman year?Right? Hmmm? Nothing could be further from the truth. The team of developers and managers interviewing you have their own tasks and projects waiting for them, back at their own desks. Believe me, they’re hoping that every interview is going to be the last one. They’d rather be doing anything else. There might be a batch of upcoming projects looming on their calendar, and they need more manpower if they’re going to even have a prayer of making their deadline. But the last guy the agency sent over was a complete flake who railed about Microsoft’s evil for half an hour.And the one before that couldn’t code his way out of a wet paper bag without using copy-and-paste. Sheesh, they think, where is HR getting these guys? How hard can it be to hire one lousy person? While they may not literally be asking themselves â€Å"Would I have a beer with this guy (or gal)†, they are looking to see how well you would fit in with the team, and how you would affect team chemistry. If they hire you, you’re all going to be spending a lot of time together for 11  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Interview War Stories he next few months or years, and they want to know that they can rely on you – and maybe even come to consider you a friend and colleague. The y want to know that they can depend on you. And as tempting as it might be to them to just settle and hire the next person who comes along, they know better. In many companies, particularly large U. S. companies, it’s harder to fire somebody than it is to hire somebody. (Welcome to the US: Land of Lawsuits! ) If they hire a dud, they’re stuck with them. That person might be unproductive or, even worse, a drain on the team’s productivity.So they keep interviewing, until they find the right person. They know that it’s better to reject a good candidate than hire a bad one. Some of those interviews are real doozies. Once you’ve interviewed long enough, you build up a repertoire of horror stories. War stories, of candidates who looked promising on paper until the interviews went terribly, terribly wrong. These war stories are not only humorous – they’re also instructive. Names have been changed to protect the innocent – or downright ridiculous. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA [email  protected] google. comkjlslen 0987654321+_=-)(*&^%$#@! ~[]{};’:†,. /? ABCDEZYXW abcdeyxw asdsasdFGJwRXGs75rpqR3oFWHMJHp-RQ. L–LqJ. H-rsdkktNNsasdf [email  protected] google. com [email  protected] google. com  © 2009 CAREERCUP 12 Interview War Stories Pop Divas Need Not Apply Leonard was a very promising C++ coder, three years out of college, with a solid work history and an impressive skill set. He proved on the phone screen that he was above-average technically, and so he was invited in for an interview. We needed a savvy C++ person to work on a piece of middleware that interfaced with our database, and Leonard seemed like a sure fit.However, once we started talking to him, things went south in a hurry. He spent most of the interview criticizing every tool and platform that we questioned him on. We used SQL Server as our database? Puhleease. We were planning to switch to Oracle s oon, right? What’s that? Our team used Tool A to do all our coding in? Unacceptable. He used Tool B, and only Tool B, and after he was hired, we’d all have to switch to Tool B. And we’d have to switch to Java, because he really wanted to work with Java, despite the fact that 75 percent of the codebase would have to be rewritten.We’d thank him later. And oh, by the way, he wouldn’t be making any meetings before ten o’clock. Needless to say, we encouraged Leonard to seek opportunities elsewhere. It wasn’t that his ideas were bad – in fact, he was â€Å"technically† right about many things, and his (strong) opinions were all backed with solid fact and sound reason (except for the ten o’clock thing – we think he may have just been making a â€Å"power play†. ) But it was obvious that, if hired, Leonard wasn’t going to play well with others – he would have been toxic kryptonite for team chem istry.He actually managed to offend two of the team members during the forty-five minutes of his interview. Leonard also made the mistake of assuming that Code Purity and Algorithm Beauty were always more important than a business deadline. In the real world, there are always compromises to be made, and knowing how to work with the business analysts is just as important as knowing how to refactor a blob of code. If Leonard would not have gotten along with other IT people, he definitely wouldn’t have gotten along with the business folks. Maybe you can get away ith hiring a Leonard if he’s one of the best ten coders in the world (he wasn’t). But he was the classic failure example for the â€Å"Would you have a beer with this guy? † test. 13  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Interview War Stories What We Have Here is Failure to Communicate Trisha was a mid-level Java developer with a solid history of middleware and JSP work on her resume. Since she was local, we invited her in for an interview without a phone screen. When we started asking her questions, it quickly became obvious that Trisha was a woman of few words.Her answers were short and often composed of â€Å"yes/no† responses, even to questions that were meant to start a dialog. Once she did start opening up, I still wasn’t sure she was actually talking. I saw her lips moving, and heard mumbling sounds coming out, but it wasn’t anything that sounded like English. I’m not sure if Trisha was nervous or just shy, but either way, I had to ask her numerous times to repeat herself. Now I was the one getting nervous! I didn’t want to be the guy who â€Å"ruined† the interview, so I pulled back on my questions. The other folks in the room and I exchanged uneasy glances.We felt like we were on a Seinfeld episode. It was almost impossible to understand Trisha, and when she did speak up, her halting, uncertain, c onfused speech patterns made us feel more like code breakers than interviewers. I am not exaggerating to say that I did not understand a single answer she gave during the interview. Knowing, alone, isn’t good enough. You’re going to be talking with other technical people, and you’re going to be talking to customers, and sales reps, and Betty from Marketing. You will write something eventually, whether it’s documentation, or a project plan, or a requirements document.The word processor might correct your spelling, but it won’t correct your lousy writing. The ability to communicate thoughts and ideas, in a clear, concise manner, is an absolutely invaluable skill that employers seek. The same goes for verbal communication. I used to work with a co-worker who doubled the length of every meeting he was in, because he could not answer a question in less than ten minutes. â€Å"Hey, Dennis, what time is it? † â€Å"Well, that’s kind of inte resting, because I just happened to be reading an article on cesium clocks and leap seconds and the history of the Gregorian Calendar and †¦ I’ll spare you the rest. [email  protected] google. com  © 2009 CAREERCUP 14 Interview War Stories You Can Count on Me, Just Not Until Early Afternoon Ahhh, 1999. The crest of the dot-com bubble, and the tightest labor market in history. Our company was racing to expand its development team, and we would have hired a German Shepherd if it knew HTML. Instead, we wound up hiring Ian. We should’ve hired the dog. Ian was a cheerful, friendly guy who had a gift of natural charisma. He got along fantastically with all of the interviewers, and seemed very intelligent.Skillwise, he was adequate. He hadn’t written a single line of computer code outside of his college courses, and didn’t even have his own e-mail address. When we gave Ian the chance to ask us questions at the end of the interview, he asked about flexib le work hours, and how soon he could take vacation time. Instead of showing an interest in the career opportunities, or in company’s growth prospects, he asked whether he could take the all-you-could-drink break room soda home with him. The questions grew more bizarre from there. Ian was very interested in our Legal Assistance benefit.He wanted to know if it covered the cost of filing lawsuits, if it covered him if he got sued himself, if it applied to any lawsuits he currently was involved in, and if he could â€Å"theoretically† use it to sue the company itself. He also asked us if he could use it to help him â€Å"fix† some unpaid speeding tickets. In any other year, that should have been it for Ian right there. But, in 1999, we were hiring anybody who was even remotely competent. Ian collected paychecks from us for eighteen months, and he was about as productive as a traffic cone.He usually sauntered into the office around ten-thirty with some sort of lame e xcuse (by my count, he had to wait for the cable guy sixteen times in a six-month period). He usually killed the morning by answering e-mail and playing ping-pong, before breaking for a two-hour lunch. After lunch, it was more pingpong, and maybe an hour of writing bad code, before bolting the office sometime around three. He was the dictionary definition of unreliable. Remember, your potential future team members need to know that they can rely on you. And they need to know that you won’t need constant supervision and hand-holding.They need to know that you’re able to figure things out on your own. One of the most important messages that you, as a candidate, can convey in your interview is hiring me will make your lives easier. In fact, this is a large part of the reason for the famously difficult interview questions at places like Amazon and Google; if you can handle that kind of unpredictable pressure in an interview, then you stand a good chance of being useful to them on real projects. To cite a more subtle example, once I was on a four person team that was desperately trying to recruit new members to help work on an old pile of software.It was a real mess; we’d inherited a nasty ball of spaghetti, and we needed people who could jump in, figure things out, and be part of the solution. There was one very smart fellow, Terry, who would have been a great asset for our team – 15  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Interview War Stories but we didn’t hire him, despite his excellent technical and personal skills. It was because he insisted on meticulous written instructions for every step of the coding process.He wasn’t going to make a suggestion or take any initiative – or blow his nose, for that matter – without a mile-long audit trail and a dozen signatures. While he insisted that he worked that way for reasons of quality (a defensible point), we got the impression that it had more to do with butt-covering, and we simply didn’t have the time for that kind of bureaucracy. Terry would have been an excellent fit in a government or aerospace IT department, something that required ISO 9000 procedures. But he would have never fit into our team; he would have been a burden, not an asset.[email  protected] google. com  © 2009 CAREERCUP 16 Interview War Stories My Spider Senses are Tingling I can think of lots of interviews that just fell into the general category of weird and uncomfortable:  »  »  »  »  »  » The Java coder who apparently considered hygiene optional, and had the interview room smelling like week-old blue cheese within ten minutes (my eyes were watering). The young fresh-out-of-college graduate with a tongue piercing that kept tick-tick-ticking against his teeth as he talked (after half an hour, it was like Chinese water torture).The girl who wore an iPod through her interview, with the volume turned loud enough that s he actually had to ask the interviewers to repeat themselves a few times. The poor, hyper-nervous fellow who was sweating like a marathon runner for half an hour. The girl who wore a T-shirt with an obscene political slogan to her interview. The guy who asked (seriously) at the end of his interview, â€Å"So, are there any hot chicks in our department? † Those are the interviews where we politely thank the people for their time, shake their hand (except for the sweaty guy), then turn to each other after the door closes and ask – did that really just happen?Nobody is saying that you have to be a bland, boring robot in a Brooks Brothers suit and tie. Remember, the interview team wants you to be â€Å"the one†, but they’re also very worried about the possibility that you’re going to be more of a distraction than an asset. Don’t talk or behave in a way that will set off their early warning radar. Whether or not somebody bothers to behave profess ionally during an interview is often a very good indicator of what kind of teammate they’re going to be. Rudimentary social skills are part of the answer to â€Å"Would I have a beer with this guy? , or at least, â€Å"Will I mind working next to this guy for six months? † From the interviewer’s point of view, they’re picking a neighbor that they’re going to live and work with 200 hours per week for foreseeable future. Would you really want a neighbor that smelled like a hog rendering plant? 17  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Interview Questions Study hard, practice and good luck! How this Book is Organized The interview questions in this book are grouped into categories, with a page preceding each category offering advice and other information.Within each category, the questions are sorted by approximate level of difficulty. Solutions for all questions are at the back. How to Use this Book An effective intervi ew is not about memorizing interview questions, but rather, about applying an understanding of concepts and demonstrating your problem solving ability. Use these questions to find the gaps in your knowledge and to learn problem solving techniques that you can apply to new questions. Advice for Devs Your interview will be most likely not be conducted on a computer. Thus, when you practice the problems in this book, we recommend writing them down on paper first.Then, type your solution into the computer exactly as you wrote it and see how you did. Special Advice for SDETs Not only do SDETs have to be great testers, but they also have to be great coders. Thus, we recommend that you complete the coding problems in this book with an eye for testing them. Even when the question doesn’t specifically ask it, you should ask yourself, â€Å"how would I test this? † Remember: any problem can be an SDET problem. Suggestions and Corrections While we do our best to ensure that all t he solutions are correct, mistakes will be made. Moreover, sometimes there is no â€Å"right† answer.If you’d like to offer a suggestion or correction, please submit it at http:// xrl. us/ccbook [email  protected] google. com  © 2009 CAREERCUP 18 Applied Mathematics How to Approach: CHAPTER-1 Many of the so-called â€Å"Applied Mathematics† problems read as brain teasers at first, but can be worked through in a logical way. Just remember to rely on the rules of mathematics to develop an approach, and then to carefully translate that idea into code. Example: Given two numbers m and n, write a method to return the first number r that is divisible by both (e. g. , the least common multiple).The Approach: What does it mean for r to be divisible by m and n? It means that all the primes in m must go into r, and all primes in n must be in r. What if m and n have primes in common? For example, if m is divisible by 3^5 and n is divisible by 3^7, what does this mean a bout r? It means r must be divisible by 3^7. The Rule: For each prime p such that p^a m (e. g. , m is divisible by p^a) and p^b n, r must be divisible by p^max(a, b) The Algorithm: Define q to be 1. for each prime number p less than m and n: find the largest a and b such that p^a m and p^b n let q = q * p^max(a, b) return qThings to Watch Out For: 1. 2. Be careful with the difference in precision between floats vs. doubles. Don’t assume that a value (such as the slope of a line) is an int unless you’ve been told so. Prime Numbers 1. 2. Every number can be written as a product of primes. Example: 504 = 2^3 * 3^2 * 7 f x is divisible by y, then every prime factor in y must be found in x. Example: If 504 is divisible by y, then y could be 168 (2^3 * 3 * 7), or 21 (3 * 7), or 4 (2^2), or many other things. Y could not, however, be equal to 10 (5 * 2), since 5 is not found in x 19  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] oogle. com Applied Mathematics CH APTER-1 1. 1 Write a method to generate the nth Fibonacci number _______________________________________________________________________pg 69 1. 2 Write a method to count the number of 2’s between 0 and n. EXAMPLE input: 35 output: 14 [list of 2’s: 2, 12, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32] _______________________________________________________________________pg 70 1. 3 Given two lines on a Cartesian plane, determine whether the two lines would intersect. _______________________________________________________________________pg 74 1. Given two squares on a two dimensional plane, find a line that would cut these two squares in half. _______________________________________________________________________pg 75 1. 5 Write an algorithm which computes the number of trailing zeros in n factorial. EXAMPLE input: 11 output: 2 (11! = 39916800) _______________________________________________________________________pg 76 1. 6 Write a function that adds two numbers. You sh ould not use + or any arithmetic operators. _______________________________________________________________________pg 77 1. Write a method to implement *, – , / operations. You should use only the + operator. _______________________________________________________________________pg 79 1. 8 Design an algorithm to find the kth number such that the only prime factors are 3, 5, and 7. _______________________________________________________________________pg 81 1. 9 A circus is designing a tower routine consisting of people standing atop one another’s shoulders. For practical and aesthetic reasons, each person must be both shorter and lighter than the person below him or her.Given the heights and weights of each person in the circus, write a method to compute the largest possible number of people in such a tower. EXAMPLE: Input(ht, wt) : (65, 100) (70, 150) (56, 90) (75, 190) (60, 95) (68, 110) Output: The longest tower is length 6 and includes from top to bottom: (56,90) ( 60,95) (65,100) (68,110) (70,150) (75,190) _______________________________________________________________________pg 84 1. 10 Given a two dimensional graph with 6000 points on it, find a line which passes the most number of points. ______________________________________________________________________pg 86  © 2009 CAREERCUP 20 Arrays & Hash Tables How to Approach CHAPTER-2 While not all problem can be solved with a hash table, a shocking number of interview problems can be. Keeping track of which items you’ve already seen? Hash table. Needing a way to efficiently look up data? Hash table. The list goes on and on. You should become very extremely comfortable with hash tables: how to implement them and how to use them. Hash Tables A hash table is a data structure that associates keys with values for O(1) lookup.Hash tables are frequently, though not always, implemented with an array. A simple implementation of a hash table that hashes a string to a Person is as follows: class HashTable { Person[] data = new Person[MAX_HASH_KEY]; int getId(string s) { /* return a key for this string */ }; bool contains(string key) { int id = getId(key); if (data247) return true; return false; } void insert(string s, Person p) { data[getId(s)]; } Note: This implementation does not handle collision. Collisions can be handled by â€Å"chaining† (eg, using a linked list), or a variety of other ways. Vector (Dynamically Resizing Array):A vector, or a dynamically resizing array, is an array that resizes itself as needed while still providing O(1) access. A typical implementation is that when a vector is full, the array doubles in size. Each doubling takes a long time (O(n)), but happens so rarely that its asymptotic time is still O(1). 21  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Arrays CHAPTER-2 2. 1 Suppose we have an array a1, a2, †¦ , an, b1, b2, †¦ , bn. Implement an algorithm to change this array to a1, b1, a2, b2, †¦ , an , bn. _______________________________________________________________________pg 87 . 2 Design an algorithm and write code to remove the duplicate characters in a string without using any additional buffer. NOTE: One or two additional variables is fine. An extra copy of the array is not. FOLLOW UP Write the test cases for this method. _______________________________________________________________________pg 88 2. 3 You are given an array of integers (both positive and negative). Find the continuous sequence with the largest sum. Return the sum. EXAMPLE input: {2, -8, 3, -2, 4, -10} output: 5 [ eg, {3, -2, 4} ] _______________________________________________________________________pg 90 2. Design an algorithm to find all pairs of integers within an array which sum to a specified value. _______________________________________________________________________pg 91 2. 5 An array A[1†¦ n] contains all the integers from 0 to n except for one number which is missing. In this problem, we cannot access an entire integer in A with a single operation. The elements of A are represented in binary, and the only operation we can use to access them is â€Å"fetch the jth bit of A[i]†, which takes constant time. Write code to find the missing integer. Can you do it in O(n) time? ______________________________________________________________________pg 93  © 2009 CAREERCUP 22 Bit Manipulation How to Approach: CHAPTER-3 Bit manipulation can be a scary thing to many candidate, but it doesn’t need to be! If you’re shaky on bit manipulation, we recommend doing a couple arithmetic-like problems to boost your skills. Compute the following by hand: 1010 – 0001 1010 > 1 1010 + 0110 1001^1001 0xFF – 1 1100^1010 1001 & 1100 0xAB + 0x11 If you’re still uncomfortable, examine very careful what happens when you do subtraction, addition, etc in base 10. Can you repeat that work in base 2? Things to Watch Out For: It’s really easy to make m istakes on these problem so, be careful! When you’re writing code, stop and thinking about what you’re writing every couple lines. When you’re done, check through your entire code. If you’re bit shifting, what happens when the digits get shifted off the end? Make sure to think about this case to ensure that you’re handling it correctly. 1 & 0 = 0 1 | 0 = 1 1 ^ 0 = 1 0 & 1 = 0 0 | 1 = 1 0 ^ 1 = 1 1 & 1 = 1 1 | 1 = 1 1 ^ 1 = 0  » And (&): 0 & 0 = 0 Or (|): 0 | 0 = 0 Xor (^): 0 ^ 0 = 0 Left Shift: x > 2 = 00000110 00011001 >> 4 = 00000001 exclusively for [email  protected] oogle. com 23  © 2009 CAREERCUP Bit Manipulation CHAPTER-3 3. 1 Write a function int BitSwapReqd(int A, int B) to determine the number of bits required to convert integer A to integer B. EXAMPLE: _______________________________________________________________________pg 94 3. 2 If you were to write a program to swap odd and even bits in integer, what is the minimum number of in structions required? (eg, bit 0 and bit 1 are swapped, bit 2 and bit 3 are swapped, etc). EXAMPLE: _______________________________________________________________________pg 95 3. 3 Write a method which finds the maximum of two numbers.You should not use if-else or any other comparison operator. EXAMPLE: _______________________________________________________________________pg 96 3. 4 Given a (decimal – e. g. 3. 72) number that is passed in as a string, print the binary representation. If the number can not be represented accurately in binary, print â€Å"ERROR† _______________________________________________________________________pg 97 3. 5 You are given two 32-bit numbers, N and M, and a two bit positions, i and j. Write a method to set all bits between i and j in N equal to M (eg, M becomes a substring of N located at i and starting j).EXAMPLE: _______________________________________________________________________pg 99 3. 6 Write a function to swap a number in plac e without temporary variables. ______________________________________________________________________pg 100 3. 7 Given an integer, print the next smallest and next largest number that have the same number of 1 bits in their binary representation. ______________________________________________________________________pg 101 input: N = 10000000000, M = 10101, i = 2, j = 6 output: N = 10001010100 Input: 5, 10 Output: 10 Input: 10001010 Output: 01000101 Input: 31, 14 Output: 2 2009 CAREERCUP 24 Brain Teasers Do companies really ask brain teasers? CHAPTER-4 While many companies, including Google and Microsoft, have policies banning brain teasers, interviews still sometimes ask these tricky questions. Advice on Approaching Brain Teasers Don’t panic when you get a brain teaser. Interviewers want to see how you tackle a problem; they don’t expect you to immediately know the answer. Start talking, and show the interviewer how you approach a problem. In many cases, you will also find that the brain teasers have some connection back to fundamental laws or theories of computer science.If you’re stuck, we recommend simplifying the problem. Solve it for a small number of items or a special case, and then see if you can generalize it. Example: You are trying to cook an egg for exactly 15 minutes, but instead of a timer, you are given two ropes which burn for exactly 1 hour each. The ropes, however, are of uneven densities – eg, half the rope length-wise might take only 2 minutes to burn. The approach: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. What is important? Numbers usually have a meaning behind them. The fifteen minutes and two ropes were picked for a reason. Simplify!You can easily time one hour (burn just one rope). Now, can you time 30 minutes? That’s half the time it takes to burn one rope. Can you burn the rope twice as fast? Yes! (Light the rope at both ends. ) You’ve now learned: (1) You can time 30 minutes. (2) You can burn a rope that takes X minutes in just X/2 minutes by lighting both ends. Work backwards: if you had a rope of burn-length 30 minutes, that would let you time 15 minutes. Can you remove 30 minutes of burn-time from a rope? You can remove 30 min of burn-time from Rope #2 by lighting Rope #1 at both ends and Rope #2 at one end.Now that you have Rope #2 at burn-length 30 min, start cooking the egg and light rope #2 at the other end. When Rope #2 burns up, your egg is done! 25  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Brain Teasers CHAPTER-4 4. 1 Add arithmetic operators (plus, minus, times, divide) to make the following expression true: 3 1 3 6 = 8. You can use any parentheses you’d like. ______________________________________________________________________pg 103 4. 2 You have a 5 quart jug and 3 quart jug, and an unlimited supply of water (but no measuring cups). How would you come up with exactly four quarts of water?NOTE: The jugs are oddly shaped, such that filling up exactly ‘half’ of the jug would be impossible. ______________________________________________________________________pg 104 4. 3 There is a building of 100 floors. If an egg drops from the Nth floor or above it will break. If it’s dropped from any floor below, it will not break. You’re given 2 eggs. Find N, while minimizing the number of drops for the worse case. ______________________________________________________________________pg 105 4. 4 A bunch of men are on an island. A genie comes down and gathers everyone together and places a magical hat on some people’s heads (e. . , at least one). The hat is magical: it can be seen by other people, but not by the wearer of the hat himself. To remove the hat, you must dunk yourself underwater at exactly midnight. If there are n people and c hats, how long does it take the men remove the crowns? The men cannot tell each other (in any way) that they have a hat. FOLLOW UP Prove that your solution is correct . ______________________________________________________________________pg 106 4. 5 There are 100 closed lockers in a hallway. A man begins by opening all the 100 lockers. Next, he closes every second locker.Then he goes to every third locker and closes it if it is open or opens it if it is closed (eg, he toggles every third locker). After his 100th pass in the hallway, in which he toggles only locker number 100, how many lockers are open? ______________________________________________________________________pg 108  © 2009 CAREERCUP 26 C / C++ How To Approach: CHAPTER-5 A good interviewer won’t demand that you code in a language you don’t profess to know. Hopefully, if you’re asked to code in C++, it’s listed on your resume. If you don’t remember all the APIs, don’t worry—your interviewer probably doesn’t either!We do recommend, however, studying up on basic C++ syntax. Pointer Syntax int p = v = Foo int *p; // Defines pointe r. &q; // Sets p to address of q. *p; // Set v to value of q. *f = new Foo(); // Initializes f. k = f->x; // Sets k equal to the value of f’s member variable. C++ Class Syntax class MyClass { private: double var; public: MyClass(double v) {var = v; } ~MyClass() {}; double Update(double v); }; double Complex::Update(double v) { var = v; return v; } C++ vs Java: A very common answer in an interview is â€Å"describe the differences between C++ and Java. If you aren’t comfortable with any of these concepts, we recommend reading up on them. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Java runs in a virtual machine. C++ natively supports unsigned arithmetic. In Java, parameters are always passed by value (or with objects, their references are passed by value). In C++, parameters can be passed by value, pointer, or by reference. Java has built-in garbage collection. C++ allows operator overloading. C++ allows multiple inheritance of classes. Thought: Which of these might be considered strengths or w eaknesses of C++ or Java? Why? In what cases might you choose one language over the other? 7  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com C / C++ CHAPTER-5 5. 1 What is the difference between a struct and a class? Where would you use each? ______________________________________________________________________pg 109 5. 2 Write a method to print the last ten lines of an input file using C. ______________________________________________________________________pg 110 5. 3 Compare and contrast a hash table vs. an STL map. How is a hash table implemented? If the number of inputs are small, what data structure options can be used instead of a hash table? _____________________________________________________________________pg 111 5. 4 How do a virtual functions work in C++? ______________________________________________________________________pg 112 5. 5 What is the difference between deep copy and shallow copy? Explain how you would use each. _______________________ _______________________________________________pg 113 5. 6 In a class, the ‘new’ operator is used for allocating memory for new objects. Can this be done using malloc? If yes, how? If no, why not? Are there any restrictions associated with the use of malloc in place of new? _____________________________________________________________________pg 114 5. 7 What is the significance of the keyword â€Å"volatile† in C? ______________________________________________________________________pg 115 5. 8 What is name hiding in C++? ______________________________________________________________________pg 116 5. 9 Why does a destructor in base class need to be declared virtual? ______________________________________________________________________pg 117 5. 10 Write a method that takes a pointer to a Node structure as a parameter and returns a complete copy of the passed-in data structure.The Node structure contains two pointers to other Node structures. For example, the meth od signature could look like so: Node* Copy(Node* root); Note: Do not make any assumptions about the data structure – it could be a tree, linked list, graph etc. Feel free to choose the language you are most comfortable with (C# or C++ are preferred) In addition to the function code, write a complete suite of unit tests for this problem. ______________________________________________________________________pg 119 5. 11 Write a smart pointer (smart_ptr) class. _____________________________________________________________________pg 120  © 2009 CAREERCUP 28 Counting and Combinatorics How to Approach: CHAPTER-6 While some problems in this chapter are simply coding problems, understanding the mathematical solution will help you â€Å"sanity check† your solution. For example, if you know how many subsets there are of a set, you can check to make sure that your algorithm to print all subsets will give you the correct number of subsets. When computing the number of ways of d oing something, think about doing it step by step. The following two examples will illustrate this technique.How many ways can you pick k elements from n elements, if order matters and elements are not replaced? Eg – if we pick 5 different letters, â€Å"abcde† is considered to be different from â€Å"edcba†. The Approach: We have n choices for the first draw. For the second draw, we only have n-1 since one is removed. Then n-2, †¦. When we draw k times, we get down to n-k+1 choices on the last draw. So, n * (n-1) * (n-2)*†¦ * (n-k+1) The Solution: n! / (n-k)! How many ways can you pick k elements from n elements, if order does not matter and elements are not replaced? We’re now just throwing letters into a bucket. Picking â€Å"a, b† is the same thing as â€Å"b, a†.The Approach: If you compare this problem to the previous one, we’ve essentially double (or triple, quadruple, etc) counted items. That is, â€Å"abc†, à ¢â‚¬Å"acb†, â€Å"bac†, â€Å"bca†, â€Å"cab†, â€Å"cba† were all considered unique in the previous solution but now they’re considered the same. Just how many times has â€Å"abc† been included (in its other forms)? 3! times, since there are 3! ways of rearranging â€Å"abc†. In fact, every item has been included 3! times, when it should have been included just once! So, we divide our previous answer by 3! (or, more generally, k! ). We now get n! / (k! * (n-k)! ). This solution is often written as n-choose-k or nCk. 9  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Counting and Combinatorics CHAPTER-6 6. 1 In how many different ways can a cube be painted by using three different colors of paint? ______________________________________________________________________pg 121 6. 2 Imagine a robot sitting on the upper left hand corner of an NxN grid. The robot can only move in two directions: right and down. Ho w many possible paths are there for the robot? FOLLOW-UP Imagine certain squares are â€Å"off limits†, such that the robot can not step on them. Design an algorithm to print all possible paths for the robot. _____________________________________________________________________pg 122 6. 3 Write a method to compute all permutations of a string. ______________________________________________________________________pg 123 6. 4 Implement an algorithm to print all valid (eg, properly opened and closed) combinations of n-pairs of parentheses. EXAMPLE: input: 3 (eg, 3 pairs of parentheses) output: ()()(), ()(()), (())(), ((())) ______________________________________________________________________pg 124 6. 5 Write a method that returns all subsets of a set. ______________________________________________________________________pg 125 2009 CAREERCUP 30 Database How to Approach: CHAPTER-7 You could be asked about databases in a variety of ways: write a SQL query, design a database to h old certain data, or to design a large database. We’ll go through the latter two types here. Small Database Design Imagine you are asked to design a system to represent a school’s registrar: course information, departments, course enrollment, teachers, etc. What are the key objects? Student. Professor. Course. Department. How do they relate to each other? *NOTE: I’m going to make some assumptions here for the purposes of writing up this explanation.In your interview, don’t make assumptions! Ask your interviewer instead. Many-to-Many:  » A course can belong to multiple departments, and each department can have multiple courses. So, create a separate table DepartmentCourse that acts as a â€Å"pairing† of the two. DepartmentCourse has just a department_id field and a course_id field. A student can be in multiple courses, a course can have multiple students. So, do the same as above and create a StudentCourse table. A course only has one professor. A professor can teach multiple courses. So, add a field professor_id to the Courses table.  » One-to-Many:  »Large Database Design When designing a large, scalable database, joins (which are required in the above examples), are generally very slow. Thus, you must denormalize your data. Think carefully about what when data will be used—you’ll probably need to duplicate it in multiple tables. 31  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Database CHAPTER-7 7. 1 Write a method to find the number of employees in each department when we have the following tables: ______________________________________________________________________pg 126 7. 2 What are the different types of joins?Please explain how they differ and why certain types are better in certain situations. ______________________________________________________________________pg 127 7. 3 What is normalization? Explain the pros and cons. _________________________________________________ _____________________pg 128 7. 4 Draw a entity-relationship diagram for a database with companies, people, and professionals (people who work for companies). ______________________________________________________________________pg 129 7. 5 You have to design a database that can store terabytes of data. It should support efficient range queries. How would you do it? _____________________________________________________________________pg 130 Employees containing: Emp_ID, Emp_Name and Dept_ID (Primary key) Departments containing: Dept_Name and Dept_ID (foreign key)  © 2009 CAREERCUP 32 Debugging Existing Code How to Approach CHAPTER-8 Sometimes, in an interview, an interviewer asks you to look at a piece of code and identify the mistakes. We recommend the following approach: 1. 2. 3. Examine the code and understand what it’s expected to do. Ask your interviewer what types of data it’s expected to handle, where it’ll be used, etc. Look for syntax errors: does ever ything type check? s the class declaration correct? Look for â€Å"hot spots†:  »  »  »  »  » 4.  »  » 5. If you see float and doubles, check for precision errors If you see division, check for rounding errors If you see memory allocation, check for memory leaks If you see unsigned ints, check to see if the int might ever be negative If you see bit manipulation, check for correctness The â€Å"normal† case The boundary cases (null, 0, 1, MAX, etc) Run through the code with a few examples: Does it do everything it’s expect to? For example, if the code is supposed to return everyone in a database under 21, does it only look for students?Maybe it should be looking for teach-ers as well? Does it handle unexpected cases? What if it takes in a list and it has a loop? 6. Further Advice 1. 2. Look at the space and time complexity—can you improve it? Correct the mistakes in the code. But do so carefully! Don’t simply make changes until it work s. Deeply understand the issues and then correct them. 33  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Debugging Existing Code 8. 1 Explain what the following code does: ((n & (n-1)) == 0) CHAPTER-8 ______________________________________________________________________pg 131 8. Find the mistake(s) in the following code: unsigned int i; for (i = 100; i ::Other { int foo() { printf(â€Å"here we are †); }; }; main() { typedef Foo typedef Derived Derived_inst; Derived_inst ii; ii. foo(); } ______________________________________________________________________pg 133  © 2009 CAREERCUP 34 Games How To Approach: CHAPTER-9 Sometimes interviewers ask these problems simply because they’re â€Å"fun,† but often, it’s also because â€Å"game† problems are heavy on object oriented design. Gaming problems tend to be more â€Å"free form† and thus they give you the chance to demonstrate how you really code.Define Data Structures W hen implementing something so free form, ask yourself, â€Å"Where can I define a class or a struct? † When in doubt, define a new class or struct. It tells the interviewer that you care about the maintainability of your code. Validate Your Assumptions Be careful about making assumptions. Suppose you’re asked to implement the word game Scrabble. Don’t assume that the dictionary will be in English—or even in that character set. It could be in any language! Ask your interviewer lots and lots of questions so that you know what to implement. Are you solving this problem once, or many times?Sometimes the solution will change depending on whether or not your code will be called multiple times. For example, suppose you’re asked to find all anagrams of a word. If you’re calling this code just once, it may be fastest just to rearrange the letters and check if they’re in the dictionary. But, if you’re going to call the code multiple time s, it’s now fastest to precompute data by iterating through all the words in the dictionary. Can you generalize your code, or part of it? If you really want to go above and beyond, try writing your code as though it were a more generalized case.For example, if you’re trying to figure out if a tic-tac-toe board has a winner, you might suggest to your interviewer solving it for the more general NxN case. If you go down this path though, be warned—sometimes problems are trickier than they appear. Also, make sure you discuss this with your interviewer so he/she knows what you’re doing. 35  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Games CHAPTER-9 9. 1 Design an algorithm to figure out if someone has won in a game of tic-tac-toe. ______________________________________________________________________pg 135 9. The Game of Master Mind is played as follows: – The computer has four slots containing balls that are red (R), yellow (Y) , green (G) or blue (B). For example, the computer might have RGGB (eg, Slot #1 is red, Slots #2 and #3 are green, #4 is blue). – You, the user, are trying to guess the solution. You might, for example, guess YRGB. – When you guess right color for the right slot, you get a â€Å"hit†. If you guess a color that exists but is in the wrong slot, you get a â€Å"psuedo-hit†. For example, the guess YRGB has 2 hits and one pseudo-hit. For each guess, you are told the number of hits and pseudo hits.Write a method that, given a guess and a solution, returns the number of hits and pseudo hits. ______________________________________________________________________pg 137 9. 3 There is an 8Ãâ€"8 chess board in which two diagonally opposite corners have been cut off. You are given 31 dominos in which a single domino can cover exactly two squares. Can you use the 31 dominos to cover the entire board? Prove your answer (by providing an example, or showing why itâ€℠¢s impossible). ______________________________________________________________________pg 138 9. Find a way to arrange 8 queens on a chess board so that none of them share the same row, column or diagonal. ______________________________________________________________________pg 139 9. 5 Othello is played as follows: Each Othello piece is white on one side and black on the other. On your turn, you place a piece on the board so that your color is facing up. You must pick a spot such that your opponent’s pieces are either on the left and the right, or on the top and the bottom. All of your opponent’s pieces on the line between two of yours are then turned over, to become yours. Your goal is to own the most pieces.Design the game Othello. Write a method to check whether someone has won the game. ______________________________________________________________________pg 141  © 2009 CAREERCUP 36 Java How to Approach: CHAPTER-10 While Java related questions are found throughou t this book, this chapter deals with questions about the language and syntax. You generally will not find many questions like this at the larger software companies (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc), which tend to avoid ‘trivia’ based questions, but these questions are very common at many smaller companies. What do you do when you don’t know the answer?If you don’t know the answer to a question about the Java language, try to figure it out by doing the following: (1) Think about what other languages do. (2) Create an example of the scenario. (3) Ask yourself how you would handle the scenario if you were designing the language. Your interviewer will likely be equally—or more—impressed if you