Interview: where to get a task from the real world?

Question

Python

Gentlemen! In the not too distant future, I will have to interview mathematician programmers.

• Standard questions like "find a cycle in a singly-linked array" or "implement a 4 GB int32 sort with 10 meters of memory" seem completely useless.
  
• Standard questions in the spirit of "find a place where the tricky code will fail" seem insufficient, because they do not reveal the main thing: the ability to write in such a way that such questions do not arise.
  

It is believed that two types of tasks will be useful:

1. Design and implement a class with such and such functionality that real people could use.
   
2. Refactor a piece of proprietary bydlokoda to a clear and applicable form, and, if possible, also tell what and why should be refactored.
   

_
Could you advise where to get such tasks?
If they are related to numerical calculations, and not to web programming, then it will be especially cool.
PS The main development language is Python + NumPy / SciPy, a little more C ++.
PPS It is possible to give something specific from our practice, but this is not the best option either: a person will also have to understand radar. Or the task will have to be heavily adapted.

Answer 1

Since you are in the field of communications, then I don’t know how to write something like a transmitter-receiver. multi-producer / multi-consumer, or count the number of unique messages in the same source without memory. Well, or take your real functionality from a working system, strongly abstract it and ask to implement some kind of metric on this abstraction. Both mathematically and realistically.

Answer 2

Since a programmer-mathematician is being interviewed, then the task should be from this area. Something that he has to solve, but something simple that is really fast to implement.
If you give a small piece of shit code, then you can see how quickly he can pick someone else's code. On the other hand, a mathematician will solve problems that you don’t have a solution for yet (otherwise why do you need a mathematician and not just a programmer?), so it’s better to check his mathematical background. A small fragment of his future work would be ideal, but this is unlikely, because you need to solve the problem quickly, and this is basically impossible due to the necessary research ... In short, do not reinvent the wheel.) Ask to implement Gaussian matrix multiplication to see on knowledge of the language and some mathematical questions. No need to scare juniors.)

Answer 3

task (more precisely, several at once in one): a person is fond of running, enters data on runs every day (date, mileage, time). as a result, data for a couple of months, for example. the program should analyze this data and give the result how uniform were the runs (for example, on a scale from 1 to 5), what is the trend (growth, fall, no trend), forecast-advice for the next few days how much to run, before that everyone should look for whether among obviously erroneous data, take into account data omissions. I can think of at least a hundred. it's strange that you don't want to

Answer 4

Create a class that converts numerals to Roman and vice versa.
A task from a real interview.

Answer 5

Problems with graphs are always interesting and easy to implement if you know the theory. In addition, they are used everywhere.

Answer 6

>In the near future, I will have to interview mathematician programmers.
acm.timus.ru/problemset.aspx?space=1&page=all

Answer 7

Ask to write an algorithm for inverting an NxN matrix

Answer 8

govnokod.ru