[crntaylor]

The first two questions I knew the answer immediately because I've read about asymptotics and runtime analysis.

Questions 3 and 4 I simply don't have the background (I've never heard of a B-tree, and I've heard of heap sort but I don't know the algorithm).

Question 5 I'd not seen before, but an algorithm was quite obvious because I've taken a course on graph theory (of course, my answer could easily be wrong).

My tentative position is that these questions are easy if you've covered the relevant material before, and very hard to impossible if not.

Disclaimer 1: my degree was mathematics, not computer science, and I don't work as a software developer (though I do write code every day).

Disclaimer 2: one of the questions I "knew" the answer to, I got wrong!

[cperciva]

So, my tentative positions is that these questions are easy if you've covered the relevant material before, and very hard to impossible if not.

There's a lot of people who are very confidently giving wrong answers to questions, which weighs against that position.

[tmoertel]

That's interesting. I would expect you not to get many submissions from people who would expect themselves to do poorly on your exam. But, if it turns out that a sizable portion of people who expect to do well do not, that's indeed interesting.

Given the selection bias we would expect among respondents, have you thought about how you will interpret the responses?

[cunac]

which is exactly the point why this type of question is useless I will always reference other sources (google,book,peer) if I am not sure and I am not sure for anything that I am not using frequently Real test is how many people will get it wrong using all resources usually available in working environment

[crntaylor]

I guess I'll wait for my grading before saying any more :)