Samsung R&d

# Samsung R&D Research Intern – IIT Patna (On-Campus) Two rounds: Technical, then HR. ## Round 1 – Technical Introduce yourself. How do you fix overfitting in a model? **Decode String.** A string is encoded as `k[encoded_string]`, which means the part inside the brackets repeats exactly k times. Encodings can be nested. Return the decoded string. Example: `3[a2[c]]` → `accaccacc`. The usual approach is a stack holding (repeat count, string built so far). **Longest Consecutive Sequence.** Given an unsorted integer array, return the length of the longest run of consecutive integers in O(n). Example: `[100, 4, 200, 1, 3, 2]` → 4 (the run 1, 2, 3, 4). The usual approach is to put everything in a hash set and only start counting from numbers whose `x - 1` isn't in the set. **Open-ended lab placement.** Cities sit on a grid, and you need to build a lab that can contaminate its surroundings. Where should it go so the cities stay "safe"? The interviewer left the definition of safe up to the candidate, who chose to maximise the distance from the lab to the nearest city. That turns it into this problem: given an n×n grid of 1s (cities) and 0s (empty cells), find the empty cell whose Manhattan distance to the nearest 1 is as large as possible, and return that distance (-1 if there are no 1s or no 0s). Run a multi-source BFS starting from every city at once; the last empty cell reached gives the answer. OS: What is context switching? What is multiprocessing, and why do we use it? Why keep multiple processes instead of just one? ## Round 2 – HR Introduce yourself, your interests Family background, JEE rank Puzzle: cut a cake into 8 identical pieces with 3 cuts. The interviewer **rejected the horizontal-cut answer**: the cream is only on top, so the bottom pieces would be plain sponge. Come prepared with a solution where every piece gets cream. Which companies have you applied to this internship season? Which field do you want to work in? What's your long-term career plan? Would you join even if I guaranteed you won't get a PPO?