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Obama the Techie

9:20 AM, Nov 15, 2007 • By MATTHEW CONTINETTI
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This Reuters dispatch on Barack Obama's visit to the Googleplex contains a slightly charming / slightly weird moment:

Obama was prepared when Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the event moderator, asked him the most efficient way to sort a million 32-bit integers.

Obama said he did not favor the bubble sort method, impressing engineers by his reference to a method of sorting out numerical algorithms.

'You answered the question correctly,' Schmidt said.

For those of you who, like me, had never heard of the "bubble-sort method" until about, oh, 20 seconds ago, here is a handy Wikipedia primer on the topic. I guess this means Obama took computer science in high school. Or maybe the question was planted. ...

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