Comment by ojr
Comment by ojr 3 days ago
I just did a phone screen with Meta, and the interviewer asked for Euclidean distance between two points; they definitely have some nerds in the building.
Comment by ojr 3 days ago
I just did a phone screen with Meta, and the interviewer asked for Euclidean distance between two points; they definitely have some nerds in the building.
K closest points using Euclidean distance and a heap, is not 8th grade math, although any 8th grade math problem can be transformed into a difficult "adult" question. Sums are elementary, asking to find a window of prefix sums that add up to something is still addition, but a little more tricky
They actually need to know so that they can train Llama.
there's a youtube channel made by a meta engineer, he said to memorize the top 75 LeetCode Meta questions and approaches. He doesn't say fluff like "recognize patterns. My interviewer was 3.88/4 GPA masters Comp Sci guy from Penn, I asked for feedback he said always be studying its useful if you want a career...
it wasn't just euclidean distance of course, it was this leetcode problem k closest points to origin https://leetcode.com/problems/k-closest-points-to-origin/des..., I thought if I needed a heap I would have to implement it myself didn't know I can use a library
Finding the k points closest to the origin (or any other point) is obviously the k-nearest neighbors problem. What algorithm and data structure you use does not change that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nearest_neighbor_search
edit: If you want to use a heap, the general solution is to define an appropriate cost function; e.g., the p-norm distance to a reference point. Use a union type with the distance (for the heap's comparisons) and the point itself.
true, I am thinking, Node and neighbors, this is a heap problem, it actually does matter what algorithm you use, I learn that the hard way today, trying to implement quickselect vs using a heap library (I didn't know you could do that) is much easier, don't make the same mistake!
That's like 8th grade math, what am misunderstanding about your comment?
E: wasn't the only one.