If the mere thought of a tricky question being asked in your interview scares you, don't worry you are not alone as there are thousands of applicants that are sailing in the same boat as yours.
The majority of the candidates at the tech companies have assured that technical assessment and coding questions are the toughest to crack in an interview.
While solving typical problems such as dealing with sql problems and solutions, you can use different tools and processes that will further help you to solve them efficiently and conveniently. One such tool is called backtracking.
If a lack of knowledge is restricting you from using this tool to solve your problem statements, this article is all you need to level up your problem-solving skills.
Uncover the deep insights of this tool and the application of concepts in specific problem statements with this article.
Also, we will help you to find the answer to the biggest doubt if it is necessary to learn backtracking interview questions or not.
Once you grasp the concept and aspects you can easily figure out if this concept will help you score better in your interview or not.
To make sure that you understand all the applications and aspects of this concept better, let's understand what is backtracking by definition.
What is backtracking
Based on the process of recursion, backtracking can help you deal with typical problems easily.
Backtracking is a trick that helps you to call a function recursively by increasing a value one level in each run. This technique is basically an algorithm used to find a definite solution for the problem statements of your choice.
In this algorithm, all the solutions that don't let the recursive loop increase its value are eliminated from the final solution count.
The constraints that decide the increment value and solution techniques are presented by the programmer in the initial phase itself.
But can backtracking be used in every problem statement? Or for say in any problem statement that you find typical? Well, this is not the case. In this case, you need to ensure that you know what the types and patterns of backtracking questions are.
This answer will also help you determine whether the backtracking process is important for your interview type or not.
Backtracking questions: Pattern and types
There are different questions in which you can use the backtracking technique such as sql problems and solutions. These patterns and types found in problem statements will help you to decide whether backtracking is the right technique to solve them or not.
Following are the specific questions in which you can easily use the backtracking technique:
- Problem statements where the solution needs to be feasible and flexible as per the required constraints
- Questions in which the final solution should be in a set of solutions with all possible feasible solutions for the same problem under the given constraints
- Problems that require you to find the ultimate optimized solution that can be best applied to the problem statement.
If the questions that you are targeting fall into these categories, it becomes quite important for you to learn backtracking. However, if you are still not sure what these problem statements look like, don't worry!
In the next portion, we have discussed the most asked questions based on Backtracking
Top Backtracking Questions asked in an interview
Backtracking questions are quite easy to identify. Following are some problem statements that are frequently asked in different interview processes:
- Find all the unique paths to travel from one corner of the maze to another with selected constraints
- Provide all the possible solutions to the N queen problem with an available set of data
- Given a complex matrix, find the shortest and longest path to cross the matrix and print the same
- Considering you are allowed maximum N swaps, search for the least possible number of ways.
- Search for all possible paths from the top-corner matrix value to the right bottom corner of the same matrix
Finding these types of questions is quite common while dealing with huge amounts of data and puzzles.
Hence, backtracking is quite important to learn for the candidates willing to join global teams.
Find the various reasons why backtracking is considered important to learn in the next section.
Why is Backtracking important for interviews?
Backtracking plays quite an important role when it comes to handling typical backtracking interview questions. However, there are many reasons why backtracking is considered important to score well in tech interviews.
Below are a few reasons why:
- Solves vivid problem statements
From complex and typical problems to the relatively simpler ones, you can use the backtracking technique on several types of problem statements. All you need to identify whether this method is suitable or not is to analyze the portions of the problem adequately. If the problem can be divided into different parts, it can certainly be solved with backtracking.
- Flexible constraints
To analyze whether any particular problem can be solved by backtracking or not, you can use flexible constraints. Also, to find the best possible solution for any particular problem, the constraints can be molded easily while using backtracking
- Easy approach
Given that the candidates invest a lot of time getting acquainted with the recursion concept and approach, the backtracking approach seems quite easy to understand and adopt for different questions since it is based on recursion. Understanding a code with a backtracking approach is quite easy as well.
- Highly efficient
Backtracking is quite efficient and accurate to use for different problems along with the added advantage of convenience. You can easily input the constraints that you require for efficient and accurate results. Also, the implementation doesn't require any complex coding tools and hence the efficiency is increased.
Winding up
Solving complex and typical problems through backtracking is one of the most efficient tricks while handling complex questions like sql problems and solutions. You can utilize the advanced concept of finding the best possible solution for a problem through backtracking easily.
Place backtracking interview questions in the pile of significant topics that you must know to crack your interview!
