Agilent Technologies Interview Question

Most unexpected: Assuming a system response is monotonic, describe how one could implement a binary search algorithm to optimize convergence at a particular point.

Interview Answer

Anonymous

Dec 7, 2011

Not a particularly difficult question, but the language and description threw me for a loop. One intuitively knows that, for example, if you're trying to set a DAC offset adjust so the idle output of an amplifier is at a particular level, you can converge to the correct value using a binary search of DAC values vs. a linear search in much less time.