Please tell us how many pound coins would fit into this room, and provide details about how you would go about making the calculation

consider the weight of the coins ,and how much the floor could support!!!

not a bad question, basically tries to work out how you would go about valuing something what factors you would take into account in a quick situation - you would probably use the same mental toolbox to decide the value of news to make a trading decision. The 'are you in the room answer' is just incomplete as oppossed bad, but so would an answer be that doesn't mention assuming an empty room or how much space is unfillable space between the stacks of coins or whether you are stacking in the first place

These are actually my favourite types of questions, both to ask and to answer. They take a little bit of imagination, a little bit of math, and a little bit of judgement. They are also very relevant. How do you estimate the cost of the BP oil spill? Not just the physical loss and cleanup but the lawsuits, loss of brand, future political environment, etc. We're dealing with known unknowns - there are models for this but they too are based on such estimates.

I like these for another reason - they give a lot of space to the candidate to discuss as much or as little as they like. The answer can be flippant or very well-crafted.

u need to guess.. start with the assumption on how "big" the room is in cubic meters so height*width*depth and how big a coin is and then estimate. I don't think they want you to be able to give them the correct answer just to see if u know how to get there

Let's say the room is a 10*10*10 cubic feet. The dimensions of a pound coin be 1 inch in diameter and 1/5th of an inch in thickness. The number of coins that you can spread on the floor equals 120*120 = 14400. You will have 120*5 such layers. So total number of coins will be 14400*600= 864000 coins.