Question
Given two integers, an hour and a minute, write a function to calculate the angle between the two hands on a clock representing that time.
eg.
clockAngle(3:40) = 130°
Once you think that you’ve solved the problem, click below to see the solution.
As always, remember that practicing coding interview questions is as much about how you practice as the question itself. Make sure that you give the question a solid go before skipping to the solution. Ideally if you have time, write out the solution first by hand and then only type it into your computer to verify your work once you've verified it manually. To learn more about how to practice, check out this blog post.
Solution
How was that problem? You can check out the solution in the video below.
Here is the source code for the solution shown in the video:
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public double clockAngle(int hour, int minutes) { final double MINUTES_PER_HOUR = 60; final double DEGREES_PER_MINUTE = 360 / MINUTES_PER_HOUR; final double DEGREES_PER_HOUR = 360 / 12; double minuteAngle = minutes * DEGREES_PER_MINUTE; double hourAngle = hour * DEGREES_PER_HOUR + (minutes / MINUTES_PER_HOUR) * DEGREES_PER_HOUR; double diff = Math.abs(minuteAngle - hourAngle); if (diff > 180) return 360 - diff; return diff; } |
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