Every cube is four dimensional, assuming time as the fourth dimension. So it would travel forward in time at a relatively constant rate (since ants don’t typically walk at relativistic speeds [citation needed]) and it would traverse the other three dimensions in normal ant ways.
Damnnn bro. They gonna start you at $15 with that kinda mind.
If the ant can only move a single direction in time, it cannot reach all the time corners. Every corner in 3 dimensional space has a twin corner, at the beginning and end of time. Since the ant can only walk forward in time, it will only reach 2 4D corners, where it started, and where it ended.
Interviewer did not define time. I will define it as 0 seconds per second. The ant can not move as movement is impossible at this time scale.
This is a lot like when Boston PD was found to screen out all the smart applicants. Sometime the company wants an obedient idiot.
Might actually be the case, lol.
Answer this question correctly (or even intelligently at all) and your application is rejected.
This is a direct appliacation of the hairy ball theorem.
I ain't even kidding
Hairy ball theorem applies to even-dimensional spheres (the ordinary sphere is the 2D surface of the 3D solid), but a cube in four-dimensional space is a three-dimensional surface, so it doesn't apply.
This is a question about graph theory, not topology; it's asking for a Hamiltonian path on the surface of 4D cube (where faces are vertices, which is different than the normal polytope graph).
This is actually quite fun and simple! Even if the problem and my following explanation look complicated :P
Let's look at the three dimensional case. One can parametrize a 3 dimensional cube as the Cartesian product of intervals [0, 1] x [0, 1] x [0, 1]. This means a cube is a set of points (a, b, c) where a, b and c are real numbers between 0 and 1. The 2 dimensional sides of the cube are then given by fixing one coordinate. That is, the 6 sides are
{0} x [0, 1] x [0, 1],
{1} x [0, 1] x [0, 1],
[0, 1] x {0} x [0, 1],
[0, 1] x {1} x [0, 1],
[0, 1] x [0, 1] x {0} and
[0, 1] x [0, 1] x {1}.
Now we just start in the middle of a side at (0, 0.5, 0.5). To get to the next side we walk towards an edge (0, 0, 0.5) and then to the middle of the next side (0.5, 0, 0.5). We iterate this process until we run out of sides with a fixed 0, then walk towards a side with a fixed 1 and continue there. That is:
(0 , 0.5, 0.5)
-> (0 , 0 , 0.5)
-> (0.5, 0 , 0.5)
-> (0.5, 0 , 0 )
-> (0.5, 0.5, 0 )
-> (1 , 0.5, 0 )
-> (1 , 0.5, 0.5)
-> (1 , 1 , 0.5)
-> (0.5, 1 , 0.5)
-> (0.5, 1 , 1 )
-> (0.5, 0.5, 1 )
This path basically spirals around the cube, going through every side only once. Here's a visualization (sorry, I'm no artist :P)
The same procedure works on a 4 dimensional cube or any other higher dimension. For the 4 dimensional cube it goes like this:
(0 , 0.5, 0.5, 0.5)
-> (0 , 0 , 0.5, 0.5)
-> (0.5, 0 , 0.5, 0.5)
-> (0.5, 0 , 0 , 0.5)
-> ...
-> (0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0 )
-> (1 , 0.5, 0.5, 0 )
-> (1 , 0.5, 0.5, 0.5)
-> (1 , 1 , 0.5, 0.5)
-> ...
-> (0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1 )
This works for arbitrary dimension except for the 1 dimensional cube (which is just a line) because the "sides" there are the two end points of the line and not connected at all. Additionally note, that it is never specified how edges count in this problem, whether they somehow count towards a face or whether you're allowed to go back and fourth on edges. You could technically only walk along edges and step into the sides every now and then.
You owe me $14.50 for reading that.
Too many people are obsessing about 4d topology in this thread. The real difficulty in the question is the non -deterministic pathfinding of the ant, in the absence of pheromones.
Four dimensional? That is a tesseract. This is impossible to describe how an ant would even interact with let alone touch all eight cells only once.
Once done with the first cube, the ant takes a gondola, going along the 4th dimension and repeats the walk he did on the first cube.
making sure you cannot solve it, so you are perfect for the job
Possible candidate responses:
Maybe they're trying to weed out all actual applicants because they're hiring the boss' kid.
You forgot option 6, spew a bunch of techno bubble at the HR person who will definitely not understand the problem themselves and wouldn't be able to tell if you'd answered it or not.
That's just response 1 from the perspective of the HR person scoring it.
I believe this is sometimes the case. I was called for an interview with a group of 15 other people ones. We were like a class, being interviewed as a group, and were supposed to solve some problems together. Nobody in that group could solve even the simple, obvious problems - we're talking basic math and reading comprehension here. Got an email the next day informing me that they had I had not been selected for recruitment.
Sure. Draw the cube for me and I will plot it's path.
Here you go: 
That renders in 2d for me
I still don't understand it. Can you rotate it along the W axis so I can visualize it better?
tricky with only four dimentions, but I'd use a Grathenbour's loop with a transverse Z axis movement if gimbal locks are ignored, naturally.
How does this compare in efficiency to casting Xagyg's Planar Binding and simply using a standard verity geas to question a daemon from one of the higher hypergeometric dimensions?
Be glad you got the shitty interview instead of getting ghosted
Okay, if you can explain to me in detail how four dimensional topology is going to be important to me while I'm stocking the shelves of your grocery store, I'll give you an answer.
Listen, once you get the job, you'll discover the truth about those shelves. And all I'm saying is, it becomes relevant that you can find your way through four dimensional space. Okay?
Entry level positions to Gregg's (fast food sausage roll chain) require 1000 word personal statements as part of online applications
Yeah but you also get equity in the company so I think that's fair enough.
You have to be proven worthy before you are handed the recipe for the vegan sausage roll. I want to know what addictive substance they put in there.
At $14.50 per hour, he's going to take the shortest route.
One does not simply walk into the 4th dimension
Choose a starting face and remember it. Walk each face of a cell containing that face touching each face once much like you would a 3-cube.
Pick any adjoining cell and move into one of its faces from there, walk each of its faces saving the one opposite the face you started on for last.
From there you're on a shared face with the cell opposite your starting cell. Traverse this one in a similar manner to the last, but this time also visit the adjoining faces of each cell adjacent to the second cell you filled, before once again ending opposite the face you started on for this cell.
Now you're on a shared face with the final cell, opposite the face you started on. Walk around the remaining four faces and you're done.
Followed these steps, ended up on the ceiling of my neighbor's tea room.
Isn't a cube by definition a 3 dimensional object? If it were 4 dimensional, it would no longer be a cube.
Its a generalisation. A 4d cube is a shape that has the same length in all 4 dimensions. You can also talk of 5d cubes, 6d cubes, etc. These are commonly called n-cubes: a 4-cube is a 4d cube.
There are also 4D spheres, even though spheres are definitionally 3D. They are called n-spheres.
Wait, isn’t this trivial?
If we’re talking about “faces” as in the cubic faces of a tesseract then each of the 8 faces are connected to all other faces except the opposite face. So just spiral around from your starting face (keeping the faces you’ve visited on the inside of the spiral) and you’re fine.
If you mean 2D faces connecting the 3D ones, then things get more difficult but not that much because you can do the exact same thing. Choose a 1D edge as your origin, pick a face touching that edge to start with, traverse that edge twice to get the next two faces. Then traverse three faces which share edges with those faces you already traversed (there are 6 faces with this property, 3 for each vertex of our origin edge, the set you pick determines the “direction” of your overall progress through/around the tesseract). Repeat that step again but for the faces that share edges with two of the three you just did. Repeat again and again and again until the last three faces share a vertex with the origin edge you started with. You’re done.
Am I missing something? Did the prompt mean to say you can only traverse each edge once?
Edit: the 2D face path I described would miss 6 faces. Those six faces should be traversed in the middle, so do the first three faces, the second three, then all six which touch both those three you just traversed and the three you would have done next on the original path. Then do the rest just like I originally mentioned.
I understood some of those words.
Well I think the ant would probably wander around until it found food
Forward, left, right, forward, left.
That’s a three dimensional cube.
Which I thought by definition was a cube.
What is a four dimensional cube?
What is a two dimensional cube?
"with it's legs"
Am I fucking stupid? Just walk in a shallow spiral?
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