[loboman]

http://www.pangeaprogress.com/1/post/2010/09/einstein-edison... 'While in Boston, Einstein was subjected to a pop quiz known as the Edison test. (...) A reporter asked him a question from the test. "What is the speed of sound?" If anyone understood the propogation of sound waves, it was Einstein. But he admitted that he did not "carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books." Then he made a larger point designed to disparage Edison's view of education. "The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think," he said.'

[Surio]

While context also has some part to play, in general I am with you in what you are trying to say.

BTW, are fictional characters counted as references? ;-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes#Knowledge_and_s...

From that article, In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes claims he does not know that the Earth revolves around the Sun, as such information is irrelevant to his work. Directly after having heard that fact from Watson, he says he will immediately try to forget it. He says he believes that the mind has a finite capacity for information storage, and so learning useless things would merely reduce his ability to learn useful things.

EDIT: Somewhat relevant (and OT) comic... http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

[jholman]

If you're going to use Holmes as a reference, then you agree with Edison and disagree with Einstein.

Holmes was characterized as profoundly valuing facts (as well as methods of thinking), if and only if those facts were useful to crime-solving. He was noted, for example, for his monograph on tobacco-ash residues. That is, he knew so much about the details of tobacco ash that, upon sampling some ash found at a crime scene, he could infer many useful things from it. Another example is that he is so familiar with all the various mud around London that when he sees some dried, he can guess where it came from.

Holmes is, overall, preposterous. And his theories (the theories that Sir ACD put in his mouth) are almost entirely without evidence.

That said, theories without facts to work upon are like a level with no fulcrum.

[brazzy]

obligatory debunking: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/05/18/nikola-tesl...

[run4yourlives]

Thomas Edison invented the cylindrical Phonograph, and movies were beginning to just show up in 1921. I'd imagine knowing the speed of sound - especially how it relates to syncing with video - was of major importance to him, much more than it was to Einstein.

Context is everything.

[fnordfnordfnord]

I doubt Edison had a full understanding of the theory of operation for the phonograph he invented. I can't see how knowing the speed of sound in air could matter at all in relation to synchronizing audio with video, or Edison's motion picture camera. He could not broadcast sound from a speaker far enough for the sound to become unsynchronized with any video that was played.

[gallerytungsten]

It's somewhat of a trick question, as the speed of sound can vary greatly depending on the material it's propagated through. In air, it varies according to temperature and altitude.

[sofal]

Is it important in this context to know exactly what the speed of sound is in feet per second without looking it up, or is it more important to be generally aware that sound travels through air via compressed air waves and that it is quite a bit slower than light, the details of which can be looked up when necessary? Are these executives going to be tasked with making lightning-quick product decisions involving physics calculations on a daily basis?

[tieTYT]

Regardless of the context, it's still a fact that that information is readily available in books.

[ajross]

This is undeniably true, but I think misses an important correlation: in my experience, people who are best able to find and access "minor facts" like this when needed are precisely those who are commonly considered "walking encyclopedias". I strongly suspect this was true of Einstein too, even if he couldn't pull up that one figure.

I think penalizing someone for not knowing any fact in particular is silly. But throwing a ton of questions like this at a candidate just to see how many they hit has, IMHO, more value than is commonly admitted.

[dlss]

This view is even more correct now that "what is the speed of sound" is only a google search away.

Maybe Edison only asked these questions because of how long it can take to look something up in a book.

For example, would you hire a programmer who couldn't answer:

- name one or two html elements and what they are for

- what is a for loop, and when would you use one?

These can of course also be looked up in books, but already knowing the answer to those questions (and many more advanced questions) in a lot of what you're paying for when you hire a programmer.

[anonymous]

Well, let's compare "what is the speed of sound" and "what is a for loop". Both are domain-specific questions, one for physics, the other for programming. For both I'd accept an answer that describes the notion or idea behind the concept and not a memorised instance of it.

So, for "what is the speed of sound", I would accept an answer such as "The speed of sound is the speed at which a wave propagates through a given medium"; though I expect an actual physicist to involve molecules, springs and so on in his answer. What I would not accept is a string of digits. A string of digits shows you know how to remember a string of digits.

Similarly, for "what is a for loop", an acceptable answer is one such as "A for loop is a construct for bounded (at least in principle, but you can have unbounded for loops in some languages) iteration over a series of elements, either generated on-the-fly or from a concrete container". The analogue to a string of digits for this question would be to give the BNF definition of a for loop in C. I think you'll agree that knowing C syntax doesn't show you know how to program.

[justincormack]

Sure I would. Some time back html did not exist, and knowing that someone decided <blink> was a good idea doesn't matter. And for loops only exist in some programming languages and are not that fundamental even if common.

I wouldn't even think to ask those questions in an interview.

[enraged_camel]

Reminds me of a similar story with Henry Ford, where he said he doesn't need to know everything since with the press of a button on his desk he can summon someone who can relay the information to him.

[hooande]

Henry Ford was notoriously ill-informed. He sued a newspaper for libel after they said he was an idiot. In the trial they asked him in what year the revolution that founded the country took place. "1812?" facepalm

edit: unfortunate typo

[hsitz]

The Ford story has a superficial similarity to the Einstein one, but in reality they're diametrically opposed. Einstein _understood_ how the physical world worked so he didn't need to carry around unnecessary "information". Ford, at least in the story, has neither "information" nor understanding.

The distinction is similar to the distinction made in philosophy between "knowledge" and mere "true belief".

[cschmidt]

Of course Einstein is famous for not knowing his own phone number in Princeton. He didn't see the point in remembering things he could look up.

[etfb]

I have to nitpick there. I suspect Einstein is actually famous for his Special and General Theories of Relativity, and for his amazing hair.

[mattschoch]

I completely agree with this, especially for us living now, since we have access to virtually any information on the internet. However, I can see why Edison would ask seemingly pointless questions. First, while that information is readily available in books, going to a library to find the book with the information needed was much more time consuming than pulling up Google, so there is the convenience factor of memorizing random tidbits of information. Second, and perhaps more important, is the fact that Edison was an inventor, hiring people to help invent things. As an inventor, one needs to have a vast array of knowledge in many fields, and then to be able to make connections between seemingly unrelated items/topics. In our case (hacker news readers), we seek to combine separate entities in ways that no one has done before, creating a new product (read: app/website). Making connections no one else sees is at the heart of entrepreneurship, and invention as well, so having that wide array of knowledge could be see as invaluable.

[Macsenour]

When I was in the Army the officer in charge of my section commented that another PFC was better because he read the software manuals so he could answer questions that came over the phone.

I said I memorize things that I can't look up easily.

[jodrellblank]

In the original link, I didn't see any claim that Edison was looking for correct answers, or that Edison knew the answers. Only that he looked at the paper for a bit and then dismissed the candidate.

For all we know, he was looking for people who deliberately ignored some subset of questions as irrelevant, or who demonstrated some quality of judgment such as questioning the appropriateness of the quiz verbally before starting, asking to take it in a quieter environment away from the arguing people, helping mediate the argument instead, stopping and asking for their first few answers to be checked to see if there was any point in them continuing, or ... anything at all, really.

[nsoun]

How I read this: Einstein would have approved of candidates using Google.