week 12

This is a tough week for me. I had an interview for seeking a summer intern to Microsoft. During the interview there are some behavior questions such as describe my most challenging project. The main part of the interview is coding. I was asked to reverse a single linked list. It was an easy and trivial question. However, I was too nervous during that time and only had so clear idea about the best solution. Initially I gave a straightforward solution that copy each node in extra space and construct a new single linked list. It did waste a lot of space, which is big O of N complexity. Then the recruiter asked me not to use extra space to solve this problem. In fact I did know that I should not use extra spaces but I thought extra space would make it easier. So when it comes to find a solution of not use extra space, I began to think about the arrangement of pointers in the list node. Although a little complicated and I was a little messy, I finally made it. However, the follow up question made me crazy. How to make it done in O(1) time rather than O(n)? I just though it was impossible but the recruiter said I could make some changes. I could not figure it out about what the change could be. He gave me some hints but even with these hints I don’t know how to do it, until he gave me the whole solution.

Well, this is my first interview after coming to UT Austin. Although my performance is not so satisfied, I took it and consider it as an important and useful experience. Wish I could do better next time.

It happens to have a company talk from Bloomberg this week on Friday. Their work is really interesting, especially the research and development of machine learning. Bloomberg really have many data resources in this big data era and it would be really cool if I could have an opportunity to have an intern there. So just applied online yesterday!