Prepare for and practice interview questions from Advantage solutions.

Advantage solutions Interview Questions

Advantage solutions Interview Guides

Data Structures & Algorithms

Given two sorted lists, write a function to merge them into one sorted list.

Merge Sorted Lists

Find Bigrams

Write a function to create a single dataframe with complete addresses in the format of street, city, state, zip code.

Complete Addresses

Write a function friendship_timeline to generate an output that lists the pairs of friends with their corresponding timestamps of the friendship beginning and then the timestamp of the friendship ending. 

Friendship Timeline

String Shift

Write a query to select the top 3 departments with at least ten employees and rank them according to the percentage of their employees making over 100K in salary.

Employee Salaries

Select the 2nd highest salary in the engineering department

2nd Highest Salary

Write a SQL query to create a histogram of the number of comments per user in the month of January 2020.

Comments Histogram

Write a query that returns all neighborhoods that have 0 users.

Empty Neighborhoods

Calculate the first touch attribution for each `user_id` that converted.

First Touch Attribution

Product Sense & Metrics

How would you investigate a decline in the average number of comments per user?

Decreasing Comments

Promoting Instagram

Threaded Comments

Group Success

WAU vs Open Rates

Machine Learning

Coefficients of Logistic Regression

Booking Regression

Job Recommendation

RMS Error

Bank Fraud Model

Probability

First to Six

500 Cards

Raining in Seattle

Found Item

Ad Raters

We’re given two tables, a <code>users</code> table with demographic information and the neighborhood they live in and a <code>neighborhoods</code> table.

Write a query that returns all neighborhoods that have 0 users. 

Example:

Input:

<code>users</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Columns</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>name</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>neighborhood_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>created_at</code></td>
<td>DATETIME</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<code>neighborhoods</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Columns</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>name</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>city_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output:

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Columns</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>name</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Write a SQL query to select the 2nd highest salary in the engineering department.

Note: If more than one person shares the highest salary, the query should select the next highest salary.

Example:

Input:

<code>employees</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>first_name</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>last_name</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>salary</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>department_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<code>departments</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>name</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output:

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>salary</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Given two sorted lists, write a function to merge them into one sorted list.

Bonus: What’s the time complexity?

Example:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>list1 = [1,2,5]
list2 = [2,4,6]
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>def merge_list(list1,list2) -&gt; [1,2,2,4,5,6]
</code></pre>

You have two sorted lists, one with m elements and one with n elements. What would be the time complexity of merging the two lists via merge sort?

You have two sorted lists, one with m elements and one with n elements. What would be the time complexity of merging the two lists via merge sort? 

Merging Lists Complexity

Write a SQL query to create a histogram of the number of comments per user in the month of January 2020.

Note: Assume bin buckets class intervals of one.

Note: Comments that were created outside of January 2020 should be counted in a “0” bucket

Example:

Input:

<code>users</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Columns</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>name</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>created_at</code></td>
<td>DATETIME</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>neighborhood_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>mail</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<code>comments</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Columns</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>user_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>body</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>created_at</code></td>
<td>DATETIME</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output:

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>comment_count</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>frequency</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Given a <code>employees</code> and <code>departments</code> table, select the top 3 departments with at least ten employees and rank them according to the percentage of their employees making over 100K in salary.

Example:

Input:

<code>employees</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Columns</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>first_name</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>last_name</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>salary</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>department_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<code>departments</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Columns</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>name</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output:

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>percentage_over_100k</code></td>
<td>FLOAT</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>department_name</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>number_of_employees</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Given the <code>employees</code> and <code>departments</code> table, write a query to get the top 3 highest employee salaries by department. If the department contains less that 3 employees, the top 2 or the top 1 highest salaries should be listed (assume that each department has at least 1 employee). 

Note: The output should include the full name of the employee in one column, the department name, and the salary. The output should be sorted by department name in ascending order and salary in descending order. 

Example:

Input:

<code>employees</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>first_name</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>last_name</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>salary</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>department_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<code>departments</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>name</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output:

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>employee_nam</code>e</td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>department_name</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>salary</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Get the top 3 highest employee salaries by department

Top Three Salaries

Given a table of bank transactions with columns <code>id</code>, <code>transaction_value</code>, and <code>created_at</code> representing the date and time for each transaction, write a query to get the last transaction for each day.

The output should include the id of the transaction, datetime of the transaction, and the transaction amount. Order the transactions by datetime.

Example:

Input:

<code>bank_transactions</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>created_at</code></td>
<td>DATETIME</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>transaction_value</code></td>
<td>FLOAT</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output:

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>created_at</code></td>
<td>DATETIME</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>transaction_value</code></td>
<td>FLOAT</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Last Transaction

The schema below is for a retail online shopping company consisting of two tables, <code>attribution</code> and <code>user_sessions</code>.

<ul>
<li>The attribution table logs a session visit for each row.</li>

<li>If <code>conversion</code> is <code>true</code>, then the user converted to buying on that session.</li>

<li>The <code>channel</code> column represents which advertising platform the user was attributed to for that specific session.</li>

<li>Lastly the <code>user_sessions</code> table maps many to one session visits back to one user.</li>
</ul>

First touch attribution is defined as the channel with which the converted user was associated when they first discovered the website.

Calculate the first touch attribution for each <code>user_id</code> that converted. 

Example:

Input:

<code>attribution</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>session_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>channel</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>conversion</code></td>
<td>BOOLEAN</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<code>user_sessions</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>column</th>
<th>type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>session_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>created_at</code></td>
<td>DATETIME</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>user_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Example output:

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th><code>user_id</code></th>
<th><code>channel</code></th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td>123</td>
<td>facebook</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>145</td>
<td>google</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>153</td>
<td>facebook</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>172</td>
<td>organic</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>173</td>
<td>email</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Let’s say that your company is running a standard control and variant AB test on a feature to increase conversion rates on the landing page. The PM checks the results and finds a .04 p-value.

How would you assess the validity of the result?

Experiment Validity

A/B Testing

Amy and Brad take turns in rolling a fair six-sided die. Whoever rolls a “6” first wins the game. Amy starts by rolling first.

What’s the probability that Amy wins?

Amy and Brad take turns in rolling a fair six-sided die. Whoever rolls a “6” first wins the game. Amy starts by rolling first.

What’s the probability that Amy wins?

Let’s say we want to build a naive recommender. We’re given two tables, one table called <code>friends</code> with a <code>user_id</code> and <code>friend_id</code> columns representing each user’s friends, and another table called <code>page_likes</code> with a <code>user_id</code> and a <code>page_id</code> representing the page each user liked.

Write an SQL query to create a metric to recommend pages for each user based on recommendations from their friend’s liked pages. 

Note: It shouldn’t recommend pages that the user already likes.

Example:

Input:

<code>friends</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>user_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>friend_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<code>page_likes</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>user_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>page_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output:

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>user_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>page_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>num_friend_likes</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Write a query to get the number of friends of a user that like a specific page

Liked Pages

Given a table of user sessions, write a query to get the number of days between each user’s first session and last session for the year 2020. 

Example:

Input:

<code>user_sessions</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>session_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>created_at</code></td>
<td>DATETIME</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>user_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output:

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>user_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>no_of_days</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Find the difference between users' first and last sessions in the year

Session Difference

Netflix has hired people to rate movies.

Out of all of the raters, 80% of the raters carefully rate movies and rate 60% of the movies as good and 40% as bad. The other 20% are lazy raters and rate 100% of the movies as good.

Assuming all raters rate the same amount of movies, what is the probability that a movie is rated good?

There are two categories of movie raters: careful and lazy. Careful raters make up 80% of the total. They rate 60% of the movies as good and 40% as bad. Lazy raters, constitute 20% of the raters and 100% of the movies as good. Given these parameters, calculate the overall probability of a movie being rated good.

There are two categories of movie raters: careful and lazy. Careful raters make up 80% of the total. They rate 60% of the movies as good and 40% as bad. Lazy raters, constitute 20% of the raters and 100% of the movies as good. Given these parameters, calculate the overall probability of a movie being rated good.

Lazy Raters

Let’s say we have a table with an <code>id</code> and <code>name</code> fields. The table holds over 100 million rows and we want to sample a random row in the table without throttling the database.

Write a query to randomly sample a row from this table.

Input:

<code>big_table</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Columns</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>name</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Write a query to randomly sample a row from a big table.

Random SQL Sample

Imagine a deck of 500 cards numbered from 1 to 500. If all the cards are shuffled randomly and you are asked to pick three cards, one at a time, what’s the probability of each subsequent card being larger than the previous drawn card?

Imagine a deck of 2000 cards numbered from 1 to 2000. If all the cards are shuffled randomly and you are asked to pick three cards, one at a time, what’s the probability of each subsequent card being larger than the previously drawn card?

Imagine a deck of 2000 cards numbered from 1 to 2000. If all the cards are shuffled randomly and you are asked to pick three cards, one at a time, what's the probability of each subsequent card being larger than the previously drawn card?

2000 cards

The <code>events</code> table tracks every time a user performs a certain action (like, post_enter, etc.) on a platform. An example of this table would look like this:

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>user_id</th>
<th>created_at</th>
<th>action</th>
<th>platform</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>2021-01-01 12:00:00</td>
<td>email_opened</td>
<td>Android</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>2</td>
<td>2021-01-01 12:05:00</td>
<td>like</td>
<td>Outlook</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>3</td>
<td>2021-01-01 12:10:00</td>
<td>post_enter</td>
<td>Gmail</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>4</td>
<td>2021-01-01 12:15:00</td>
<td>post_cancel</td>
<td>Outlook</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>5</td>
<td>2021-01-01 12:20:00</td>
<td>like</td>
<td>Gmail</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
What query would you write to determine how many different users gave a like on June 6, 2020?

Example:

Input:

<code>events</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td>user_id</td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>created_at</td>
<td>DATETIME</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>action</td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>platform</td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td>num_users_gave_like</td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Find out the number of users that gave a like on a certain date

Like Tracker

Write a query to create a new table, named flight routes, that displays unique pairs of two locations.

Note: Duplicate pairs from the <code>flights</code> table, such as Dallas to Seattle and Seattle to Dallas, should have one entry in the flight routes table.

<h3>Schema</h3>

<code>flights</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>source_location</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>destination_location</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output:

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>destination_one</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>destination_two</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

<h3>Example</h3>

Input:

<code>flights</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>id</th>
<th>source_location</th>
<th>destination_location</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>Seattle, WA</td>
<td>Dallas, TX</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>2</td>
<td>Dallas, TX</td>
<td>Seattle, WA</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>3</td>
<td>Seattle, WA</td>
<td>San Francisco, CA</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>4</td>
<td>San Francisco, CA</td>
<td>Dallas, TX</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>5</td>
<td>San Francisco, CA</td>
<td>Portland, OR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>6</td>
<td>Seattle, WA</td>
<td>Dallas, TX</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>7</td>
<td>Portland, OR</td>
<td>San Francisco, CA</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>8</td>
<td>San Francisco, CA</td>
<td>Los Angeles, CA</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output:

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>destination_one</th>
<th>destination_two</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Dallas, TX</td>
<td>Seattle, WA</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>Portland, OR</td>
<td>San Francisco, CA</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>San Francisco, CA</td>
<td>Seattle, WA</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>Dallas, TX</td>
<td>San Francisco, CA</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>Los Angeles, CA</td>
<td>San Francisco, CA</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Flight Records

Given a table called <code>employees</code>, get the largest salary of any employee by department

Example:

Input:

<code>employees</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>department</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>salary</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output:

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>department</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>largest_salary</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Write a query to get the largest salary of any employee by department

Largest Salary by Department

Let’s say you have a table called <code>events</code> that keeps track of every user’s actions. A small example of the <code>events</code> table would look like this:

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>user_id</th>
<th>created_at</th>
<th>action</th>
<th>platform</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>2021-01-01 12:00:00</td>
<td>email_opened</td>
<td>Android</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>2</td>
<td>2021-01-01 12:05:00</td>
<td>like</td>
<td>Outlook</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>3</td>
<td>2021-01-01 12:10:00</td>
<td>post_enter</td>
<td>Gmail</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>4</td>
<td>2021-01-01 12:15:00</td>
<td>post_cancel</td>
<td>Outlook</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>5</td>
<td>2021-01-01 12:20:00</td>
<td>like</td>
<td>Gmail</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Using this information, you wish to find out how many users have opened an email.

What query would you use to find out?

Example:

Input:

<code>events</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td>user_id</td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>created_at</td>
<td>DATETIME</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>action</td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>platform</td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output:

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td>num_users_open_email</td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Emails Opened

Write a function called <code>find_bigrams</code> that takes a sentence or paragraph of strings and returns a list of all its bigrams in order.

Note: A bigram is a pair of consecutive words.

Example:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>sentence = &#34;&#34;&#34;
Have free hours and love children? 
Drive kids to school, soccer practice 
and other activities.
&#34;&#34;&#34;
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>def find_bigrams(sentence) -&gt;

 [(&#39;have&#39;, &#39;free&#39;),
 (&#39;free&#39;, &#39;hours&#39;),
 (&#39;hours&#39;, &#39;and&#39;),
 (&#39;and&#39;, &#39;love&#39;),
 (&#39;love&#39;, &#39;children?&#39;),
 (&#39;children?&#39;, &#39;drive&#39;),
 (&#39;drive&#39;, &#39;kids&#39;),
 (&#39;kids&#39;, &#39;to&#39;),
 (&#39;to&#39;, &#39;school,&#39;),
 (&#39;school,&#39;, &#39;soccer&#39;),
 (&#39;soccer&#39;, &#39;practice&#39;),
 (&#39;practice&#39;, &#39;and&#39;),
 (&#39;and&#39;, &#39;other&#39;),
 (&#39;other&#39;, &#39;activities.&#39;)]
</code></pre>

Let’s say we have a very naive advertising platform. There is an audience of size A and a limited amount of impressions B.

Each of the impressions goes to just one user, defined at random. Every user in the audience has the same random chance of receiving each impression. 

<ol>
<li>Compute the probability that a user has exactly 0 impressions. </li>

<li>What’s the probability that every person has at least 1 impression?</li>
</ol>

Impression Reach

There are two tables. One table is called <code>swipes</code> that holds a row for every Tinder swipe and contains a boolean column that determines if the swipe was a right or left swipe called <code>is_right_swipe</code>. The second is a table named <code>variants</code> that determines which user has which variant of an AB test.

Write a SQL query to output the average number of right swipes for two different variants of a feed ranking algorithm by comparing users that have swiped 10, 50, and 100 swipes in a <code>feed_change</code> experiment.

Note: Users have to have swiped at least 10 times to be included in the subset of users to analyze the mean number of right swipes.

Example:

Input:

<code>variants</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Columns</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>experiment</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>variant</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>user_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<code>swipes</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Columns</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>user_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>swiped_user_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>created_at</code></td>
<td>DATETIME</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>is_right_swipe</code></td>
<td>BOOLEAN</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output:

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Columns</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>variant</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>mean_right_swipes</code></td>
<td>FLOAT</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>swipe_threshold</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>num_users</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Write a SQL query to find the average number of right swipes for different ranking algorithms.

Swipe Precision

Let’s say you want to test the close friends feature on Instagram Stories.

How would you make a control group and test group to account for network effects?

What could be a potential risk when Facebook segments the metrics of the user interface change by market or demographic groups?

What could be a potential risk when Facebook segments the metrics of the user interface change by market or demographic groups?

Network Experiment Design I

What is the primary metric that Facebook should monitor if it decides to make the user interface of its posting feature more like Instagram's?

What is the primary metric that Facebook should monitor if it decides to make the user interface of its posting feature more like Instagram's?

Network Experiment Design II

If Facebook changes its user interface to mimic Instagram's, which adverse effect should they anticipate and monitor?

If Facebook changes its user interface to mimic Instagram's, which adverse effect should they anticipate and monitor?

Network Experiment Design III

Project Budget Error

A digital health startup is analyzing ECG sensor data captured from wearable heart monitors. Each row in the dataset represents one heartbeat, including its timestamp and calculated heart rate at that moment.

The clinical team wants to detect tachycardia runs, periods where a patient’s heart rate stays above 100 bpm continuously for at least 10 seconds .

Write a SQL query to identify every valid tachycardia run and return:

<ol>
<li><code>patient_id</code></li>
<li><code>run_start</code>: timestamp of the first beat in the run</li>
<li><code>run_end</code>: timestamp of the last beat in the run</li>
<li><code>duration_seconds</code>: difference in seconds between start and end (rounded to 2 decimals)</li>
</ol>

Sort results by <code>patient_id</code>, then <code>run_start</code>.

Definition of a Tachycardia Run

<ul>
<li>All consecutive heartbeats must have <code>heart_rate &gt; 100</code></li>
<li>Total duration ≥ 10 seconds</li>
<li>Any gap ≥ 3 seconds between consecutive beats breaks the run</li>
</ul>

Note: A patient may have multiple separate runs.

Schema

Input

<code>ecg_readings</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td>patient_id</td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>timestamp</td>
<td>DATETIME</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>heart_rate</td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column</th>
<th>Type</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td>patient_id</td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>run_start</td>
<td>DATETIME</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>run_end</td>
<td>DATETIME</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>duration_seconds</td>
<td>DECIMAL</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Example

Input

<code>ecg_readings</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>patient_id</th>
<th>timestamp</th>
<th>heart_rate</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>2025-03-01 10:00:00</td>
<td>98</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>2025-03-01 10:00:02</td>
<td>105</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>2025-03-01 10:00:04</td>
<td>110</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>2025-03-01 10:00:07</td>
<td>108</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>2025-03-01 10:00:12</td>
<td>107</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>2025-03-01 10:00:15</td>
<td>85</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>2025-03-01 10:00:20</td>
<td>120</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>2025-03-01 10:00:28</td>
<td>122</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>patient_id</th>
<th>run_start</th>
<th>run_end</th>
<th>duration_seconds</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>2025-03-01 10:00:02</td>
<td>2025-03-01 10:00:12</td>
<td>10.00</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

<h3>Explanation</h3>

The high-rate streak from 10:00:02 to 10:00:12 forms one continuous sequence because each gap between timestamps (2 to 4, 4 to 7, and 7 to 12) is less than three seconds. This creates a valid 10-second run. The later high values at seconds 20 and 28 are separated by an eight-second gap, so they form a different sequence that is shorter than 10 seconds and is therefore ignored.

Write a SQL query to identify every valid tachycardia run.

Detecting ECG Tachycardia Runs

Given two strings <code>A</code> and <code>B</code>, write a function <code>can_shift</code> to return whether or not <code>A</code> can be shifted some number of places to get <code>B</code>.

Example:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>A = &#39;abcde&#39;
B = &#39;cdeab&#39;
can_shift(A, B) == True

A = &#39;abc&#39;
B = &#39;acb&#39;
can_shift(A, B) == False
</code></pre>

There are two lists of dictionaries representing friendship beginnings and endings: <code>friends_added</code> and <code>friends_removed</code>. Each dictionary contains the <code>user_ids</code> and <code>created_at</code> time of the friendship beginning /ending.

Write a function <code>friendship_timeline</code> to generate an output that lists the pairs of friends with their corresponding timestamps of the friendship beginning and then the timestamp of the friendship ending.

Note: There can be multiple instances over time when two people became friends and unfriended; only output lists when a corresponding friendship was removed.

Example:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>friends_added = [
 {&#39;user_ids&#39;: [1, 2], &#39;created_at&#39;: &#39;2020-01-01&#39;},
 {&#39;user_ids&#39;: [3, 2], &#39;created_at&#39;: &#39;2020-01-02&#39;},
 {&#39;user_ids&#39;: [2, 1], &#39;created_at&#39;: &#39;2020-02-02&#39;},
 {&#39;user_ids&#39;: [4, 1], &#39;created_at&#39;: &#39;2020-02-02&#39;}]

friends_removed = [
 {&#39;user_ids&#39;: [2, 1], &#39;created_at&#39;: &#39;2020-01-03&#39;},
 {&#39;user_ids&#39;: [2, 3], &#39;created_at&#39;: &#39;2020-01-05&#39;},
 {&#39;user_ids&#39;: [1, 2], &#39;created_at&#39;: &#39;2020-02-05&#39;}]
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>friendships = [{
 &#39;user_ids&#39;: [1, 2],
 &#39;start_date&#39;: &#39;2020-01-01&#39;,
 &#39;end_date&#39;: &#39;2020-01-03&#39;
 },
 {
 &#39;user_ids&#39;: [1, 2],
 &#39;start_date&#39;: &#39;2020-02-02&#39;,
 &#39;end_date&#39;: &#39;2020-02-05&#39;
 },
 {
 &#39;user_ids&#39;: [2, 3],
 &#39;start_date&#39;: &#39;2020-01-02&#39;,
 &#39;end_date&#39;: &#39;2020-01-05&#39;
 },
]
</code></pre>

Let’s say you work for a social media company that has just done a launch in a new city. Looking at weekly metrics, you see a slow decrease in the average number of comments per user from January to March in this city.

The company has been consistently growing new users in the city from January to March.

What are some reasons why the average number of comments per user would be decreasing and what metrics would you look into?

What metric could be used to measure if active users are still engaging on the platform despite an overall decrease in the average number of comments per user?

What metric could be used to measure if active users are still engaging on the platform despite an overall decrease in the average number of comments per user?

You’re given a dataframe of students named <code>students_df</code>:

<code>students_df</code> table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>name</th>
<th>age</th>
<th>favorite_color</th>
<th>grade</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Tim Voss</td>
<td>19</td>
<td>red</td>
<td>91</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>Nicole Johnson</td>
<td>20</td>
<td>yellow</td>
<td>95</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>Elsa Williams</td>
<td>21</td>
<td>green</td>
<td>82</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>John James</td>
<td>20</td>
<td>blue</td>
<td>75</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>Catherine Jones</td>
<td>23</td>
<td>green</td>
<td>93</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Write a function named <code>grades_colors</code> to select only the rows where the student’s favorite color is green or red and their grade is above 90.

Example:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>import pandas as pd

students = {&#34;name&#34; : [&#34;Tim Voss&#34;, &#34;Nicole Johnson&#34;, &#34;Elsa Williams&#34;, &#34;John James&#34;, &#34;Catherine Jones&#34;], &#34;age&#34; : [19, 20, 21, 20, 23], &#34;favorite_color&#34; : [&#34;red&#34;, &#34;yellow&#34;, &#34;green&#34;, &#34;blue&#34;, &#34;green&#34;], &#34;grade&#34; : [91, 95, 82, 75, 93]}

students_df = pd.DataFrame(students)
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>def grades_colors(students_df) -&gt;
</code></pre>

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>name</th>
<th>age</th>
<th>favorite_color</th>
<th>grade</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Tim Voss</td>
<td>19</td>
<td>red</td>
<td>91</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>Catherine Jones</td>
<td>23</td>
<td>green</td>
<td>93</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Write a function to select only the rows where the student's favorite color is green or red and their grade is above 90.

Good Grades and Favorite Colors

You are a data scientist at YouTube focused on creators.

A PM comes to you worried that amateur video creators could do well before but now it seems like only “superstars” do well.

What data points and metrics would you look at to decide if this is true or not?

Calculate Moving Average	SQL	Easy
Predict Customer Churn	Machine Learning	Medium
A/B Test Significance	Statistics	Medium
Optimize Query Performance	SQL	Hard
Feature Importance Analysis	Machine Learning	Medium
Clean Missing Data	Python	Easy
Neural Network Architecture	Deep Learning	Hard
Calculate Cohort Retention	SQL	Medium
Bayesian Probability	Statistics	Easy
Recommend Similar Products	Machine Learning	Hard

Advantage solutions Interview Questions

Advantage solutions Interview Guides

Advantage solutions Interview Questions

Challenge

Discussion & Interview Experiences

Discussion & Interview Experiences