The soccer field problem (football pitch problem)
The soccer field problem is a question I created that I might ask if I ever need to give interviews again.
A league is holding many soccer games on Saturday on a large grassy field. A single two car-wide gravel road runs adjacent to the field, along the longer edge of the field. The field is multiple times wider and longer than the playing field needed for a game, and must be shared for games and parking as there is no dedicated parking area.
You are in charge of scheduling and setting up all of the games for the next twelve weekends for play and parking. Describe how you would organize this event.
It's very purposely a very vague question. The intent here would be to see how far candidates would push for information, fill in the gaps and then proceed to optimize a solution. What sort of data collection and analysis would they use to improve?
These might be some questions candidates might ask:
- What type of league is it?
- Is there some sort of tournament being played?
- What are the dimensions of the overall field?
- What are the dimensions of a playing field (pitch)?
- How much buffer space is needed between playing fields?
- How many goals are available to use?
- Are any fields already set up?
- How long are the games?
- Are penalty shootouts expected to break ties?
- How big are the teams?
- How many cars per team do you expect?
- Do you enforce a limit of number of cars per team to maximize parking?
- How do you ensure safety of players around parking areas?
- How do you get cars in and out? Do you get parking attendants or make it a free for all?
- Do you arrange shuttle buses instead?
This question appeals to me since it seems to mirror many resource problems I see. Allocating parts of the larger fields to games reminds me of memory allocation, and dealing with getting cars in and out reminds me of resource bottlenecks. For example, you can see memory fragmentation in elements of how some cars might have occupants needing to stay for multiple games, and hence they block the setting up of a field in that same area.