A Good QA Interview Question

"What is 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5, etc all the way to 100?"

My daughter ( 9 years old ) asked me that the other day. I started toying with it my head, and after a few minutes I realized I could figure it out quite easily without a calculator or a scrap of paper.

Why is that a good interview question?
a) It presses the potential QA candidate to think.

Can they work this problem out without relying on a piece of paper or a calculator? Can they see the patterns and then utilize them to acheive the goal?

b) It presses for a sort of abstraction that is really very valuable in a QA candidate.

In my opionion a QA Engineer has to be a level above a development engineer. We have to understand the developer's tools and issues, constraints and frame of reference, and then we have to OUTSMART him!

Would you make a good QA Engineer?

Can you figure out the answer without using a scrap of paper or a calculator?

~ Basil ~