interviews on S Anand

Data Hack Summit 2026 Interview

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 13:52:37 +0800

Sarthak interviewed me at Data Hack Summit 2026. Here’s the Q&A.

Interviews and panel discussions force me to think quickly and tend to crystallize thoughts I haven’t yet fully processed. I really enjoy them, and this was no exception.

Q: Any key takeaways you’d be taking home?

Knowledge graphs may not be as hot a topic as people might think, that’s definitely one.
Forward-deployed engineers have not yet caught on as much as I would have thought they had.
Surprisingly, no one mentioned outcome-based pricing as a theme, which is interesting; I’m guessing that there’s still a lot of pressure against it.
And loop engineering does seem to have potential, but the verdict is out.

Q: Is judgment now more valuable than analysis?

Some parts of judgment are, and the rest of it is as useless.
Judgment you can explain is something that you can train an agent on. So that’s not the part that’s going to be useful.
Maybe some aspects of judgment are about intuition, about noticing something and saying, “Oh, this could be the next trend,” which (A) happens to work and (B) is not something that is easily teachable. That will become more important.
But how can you teach judgment if that is not teachable? Unfortunately, I guess people just have to imbibe it in some shape or form.

Q: How do you spot a truly important insight?

I used to evaluate whether it was big, useful, and surprising - BUS is the acronym that I use.
I’ve taught agents to do that using a skill; they do a fantastic job of it.
So if your question is how do you spot an insight that an agent can’t, then my answer is I don’t know.

Q: How do you filter through the noise fast?

Agents can help if we know how to ask better questions.
E.g. If we know to ask, “Are the smart people following this trend?” or “Are we seeing any early trends?”
The book Superforecasting describes ways in which forecasters are able to capture that signal.
But with agents, I think we can be superpowered, making a regular forecaster a superforecaster.
It’s not something that I’ve personally tried, but now that you mention it, I’m going to try.

Q: When would you publish an AI-found insight without changing it?

I’m just trying to think how many I already have. And the short answer is several, so I can’t remember when I first did it.
Already done.

Hire Interview Cheaters

Sun, 24 Mar 2024 14:39:01 +0000

Oh, wonderful! They’re keen to get in. Wise enough to take help. Honest enough not to be able to cover it up. Sounds like a good hire!

Solving multiple choice questions

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 12:00:00 +0000

How would you solve this multiple-choice problem: What is 12345 x 45678?

201932843
563894910
402394820
384718349
938491834

It always amazes me when people try and multiply the two numbers. In any objective-type test (multiple choice question), the aim is not to solve the problem – it is to pick the correct answer!

Most people don’t seem to realise the difference.

If I had to solve the problem, I’d look for shortcuts. For example,

All answers have 9 digits. So that’s not going to help.
12345 ends with a 5. All multiples of 5 end with 5. So the answer is either (2) or (3).
1. ~~201932843~~
2. 563894910
3. 402394820
4. ~~384718349~~
5. ~~938491834~~
Multiplying the first digits, 1 X 4 = 4. So the answer’s got to start with a bit more than 4. (3) starts with 40. That’s too low. C’mon, the second number STARTS with 45. So… 2. 563894910 3. ~~402394820~~

This takes me 10 seconds. Multiplying the two takes me ten times as long.

Let me repeat the point: You DON’T have to get to the answer. You’ve already been given the answer. You just don’t know which one it is. And you don’t have to solve the entire problem to pick the right one.

There are many ways of picking the right answer. One is what I just used: the answer must satisfy some property. In this case, the answer must be a multiple of 5.

In other cases, the answer must be close to something. For example, what’s 37463 x 28438?

532686397
1065372794
2130745588
4261491176
8522982352

Well, let’s just multiply the first two digits: 37 x 28. That’s 1036. So the answer’s got to be close. OK, (2) is the answer.

These are not one-off techniques, nor are these applicable only to numbers. You can always pick the right choice without solving the problem.

A weaker, but more general version of the above rule is: you can always eliminate choices without solving the problem.

I’ll blog more on this shortly.

Comments

anand 19 Jan 2007 9:47 am: hats off. U made me to think…….
Vinodh 19 Jan 2007 11:16 am: First rule should be to eliminate the options based on the product of the last digits. So, for the second example, it’s easier to eliminate all the other four options based on this rule. Of course, there are easier techniques for generic multiplication/division as well…I have an somewhat interesting technique to calculate squares/products based on simple algebraic formulae…of course they are better used with some practice, but very powerful.
jake 19 Jan 2007 1:44 pm: its easier and faster to get the answer for the second one by looking at the last digit of the answers. it has to be the same as the last digit of the product of the unit place digits of the numbers being multiplied.
Shreyas 20 Jan 2007 8:14 am: “All multiples of 5 end with 5” - I guess it should be “All multiples of 5 end with 5 or 0” :)
Anonymous 20 Jan 2007 7:55 pm: CAN YOU PLEASE TELL ME WHERE i CAN FIND MORE TIPS ON SOLVING MCQ? I LIKED GOING THROUH THIS BUT I NEED MORE PRACTICE. THANK YOU
Anonymous 22 Jan 2007 5:58 pm: There is a much better way to solve Q2. the last digit of N1 is 3 and the last digit of N2 is 8. 3*8 is 24 so N1*N2 has to end with 4. so the answer should be
GV Rao 7 Mar 2007 7:42 am: I would like to multiply first 2 digits: 45 x 78, and in second case: 3 x 8, which is easy, last digits gives more guess on product.
Sri Lankan Friends 10 Mar 2007 10:23 am: hmmm very interesting
ali 24 May 2007 8:16 pm: good but should be more efficent via understanding
vasudha 19 Jan 2007 12:00 pm: HATS OFF TO YOU… THE INFORMATION IS PRETTY GOOD.. YOU MADE ME THINK
deepak 25 Feb 2011 6:20 am: phaltu trick sab hai… issss se kahi behtar tricks mere paas hai…. sirf tukka maar ke IIT me aa gaya hu YES I AM IN IIT…