Epic Software Engineer Interview Experience — MIIS, Logic Puzzles, and Four Coding Tasks

Online Assessment Format

1. Two minutes: Answer as many short logic/reasoning questions as possible.
2. Twenty MIIS questions.
3. Fifteen math/logic questions.
4. Four programming questions.

MIIS Questions

1. MIIS arithmetic

Calculate the value of 1 + 1 * 3 / 2 + 7.

2. MIIS strings and type conversion

Given A = "JOHN", B = "JANE", and C = "3DOES", find the value of 0.A + B + C - 3.

Math / Logic Questions

1. Coins

Someone has two coins totaling 55 cents. One of the coins is not a nickel, worth five cents. What are the two coins?

2. Tree growth

A tree doubles in size every day. On day ten, it is eight feet tall. On which day was it five feet tall?

3. Shopping

Someone goes to a store and has this conversation with the salesperson:

The salesperson says, "One costs one dollar."

The customer says, "I need 600 of them. Here are three dollars."

What is the customer buying?

4. Time calculation

Fifty minutes ago, the number of minutes between that time and 3 p.m. was four times the number of minutes between now and 5 p.m. How many minutes remain until 5 p.m. now?

5. Eating pizza

One and a half people eat one and a half pizzas in one and a half days. How many pizzas would nine people eat in three days?

6. Hallway and offices

Two people start simultaneously at opposite ends of a hallway and walk toward each other:

1. A starts at office 1 and moves at five offices per minute.
2. B starts at office 46 and moves at ten offices per minute.

At which office do they meet?

Programming Questions

1. Keypad String Encoding

Given a string, convert each letter to its corresponding key sequence on a traditional telephone keypad.

The mapping is:

2: A -> 2, B -> 22, C -> 222
3: D -> 3, E -> 33, F -> 333
4: G -> 4, H -> 44, I -> 444
5: J -> 5, K -> 55, L -> 555
6: M -> 6, N -> 66, O -> 666
7: P -> 7, Q -> 77, R -> 777, S -> 7777
8: T -> 8, U -> 88, V -> 888
9: W -> 9, X -> 99, Y -> 999, Z -> 9999

Rules:

1. Ignore spaces.

2. Ignore case.

3. If two adjacent letters map to the same key, insert # between their encodings. For example, AB maps to 2#22, because A and B are both on key 2. AD maps to 23, because A and D use different keys and need no #.

4. Character Frequency Map

Given a string, count how often each character occurs and store the counts in a map.

Requirements:

1. Keys must remain in the order of their first appearance in the input, rather than alphabetical order.

2. Ignore spaces.

3. Ignore case.

4. Mingo

Given a 100-by-100 integer matrix, with each cell's value between 1 and 1,000,000, and an array called representing the order in which numbers are called.

A Mingo occurs when all the values in any of the following have appeared in called:

1. Any complete row.
2. Any complete column.
3. The main diagonal from top left to bottom right.

Process called from left to right and check for Mingo after each call. Return [mingoOccurred, numberOfCalls], where mingoOccurred is a boolean indicating whether Mingo occurred, and numberOfCalls is the number of calls made when the first Mingo occurred.

4. Adjacent Transpositions

Given two strings, source and target, containing the same characters with the same frequencies, determine the minimum number of adjacent swaps needed to transform source into target.

Requirements:

1. Each swap may exchange only two adjacent characters.
2. Assume the transformation is always possible: the strings do contain the same characters with the same frequencies.