How would you answer this job-interview question?
- by ahmed
One of the five people who interviewed me asked a question that resulted in an hour-long discussion: "Explain how you would develop a frequency-sorted list of the ten thousand most-used words in the English language."
My initial response was to assail the assumptions underlying the problem. Language is a fluid thing, I argued. It changes in real time. Vocabulary and usage patterns shift day-to-day. To develop a list of words and their frequencies means taking a snapshot of a moving target. Whatever snapshot you take today isn't going to look like the snapshot you take tomorrow or even five minutes from now.
Thanking you advance for your answers and consideration.
