[hf]

It is astonishing to me, how widespread fisher-wife's-tale-level conceptions about fundamental aspects of our existence are.

I devoutly hope that you are not, upon contemplation, equate a well-versedness in general knowledge with mindless memorization. Is emergent behaviour of neural networks really that alien a concept? Is it possible to believe, in all earnestness, that factoids such as these remain isolated and inactive in your memory until recalled?

These questions aren't there to test your ability to learn atomic facts without rhyme or reason. These questions, pitiful as they may seem, try to probe the breadth of your mental landscape.

[coupdejarnac]

You might be right about testing the breadth of one's knowledge, but, for me, this test reminds me of the Mensa tests in Reader's Digest and other magazines from years past. The Mensa tests seemed like they were designed to be just easy enough to get several right answers, thereby piquing the interest of the test taker. Maybe you are smart enough to be in Mensa! Maybe you are smart enough to work at Edison! This test strikes me as 1920s era gamification.

[roel_v]

Well, actually, according to Edison's defense of his test as linked to in the OP, he did try to gauge one's ability for rote memorization, and he didn't care about whether people knew about things beyond their immediate job. His 'theory' (highly flawed, I think) is that one needs excellent memory to be able to make decisions now, without needing to take the time to research them.

[coldtea]

>His 'theory' (highly flawed, I think) is that one needs excellent memory to be able to make decisions now, without needing to take the time to research them.

I don't see any flaw in the theory. When you code for example, if you don't know in advance about several idioms, data structures, algorithms etc that's (most of the time) not something that you will make up later by researching and changing your program. It's simply something that will take you down a narrower path and constrain your programming.

I'm not talking about knowing the details of algorithm X, or how to implement it from memory. But if you don't know it's existence even, it wont be an algorithm you'll consider when you write your program.

[Tycho]

Same thing applies to programming interviews I guess. If you know the minutiae off by heart, then you will be able to make decisions and proceed with your coding immediately rather than take a diversion to research the details. Obviously being able to quickly research is also a very useful skill, but I think it's reasonable to expect a certain level of 'memorized knowledge' from a professional programmer.

[SilasX]

Knowledge of the factoids Edison regarded as important is not the same as breadth of knowledge. There is far too much to know to capture it in a short test like this.