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Machine Learning

Which model would perform better and why?

Booking Regression

How would we build a model to detect fraud and text customers to approve or deny fraudulent transactions

Bank Fraud Model

Rebalancing outcome probabilities for a classifier on imbalanced data.

Rebalance Probabilities

Lasso vs Ridge

Why can the same machine learning algorithm produce different success rates on the same dataset

Same Algorithm Different Success

Data Structures & Algorithms

Find the missing integer from a array of consequtive integers

Find the Missing Number

Given an integer N, write a function that returns all of the prime numbers up to N

Prime to N

Given an array and a target integer, write a function that returns the indices of two integers in the array that add up to the target integer.

Target Indices

This problem involves identifying duplicate numbers in a list of integers. The function should return a list of the duplicate numbers.

Find Duplicate Numbers in a List

Write a function `sort_lists` to combine sorted integer lists into one sorted list without using libraries or `sort`/`sorted`

Merge N Sorted Lists

Analytics

How would you present the performance of each subscription to an executive?

Analyzing Churn Behavior

How would you find out if an increase in user conversion rates after a new email journey is casual or just part of a wider trend?

Causal Email Journey 

Let’s say that you're in charge of an e-commerce D2C business that sells socks. What business health metrics would you care?

D2C Socks e-Commerce

Challenges of specific student test score layouts, recommended formatting changes for enhanced analysis, and common issues found in "messy" datasets.

Digitizing Student Test Scores

How would you approach improving the quality of airline data?

Addressing Data Quality Issues

Behavioral

Describing a data project and its challenges

Hurdles In Data Projects

Strategically resolving misaligned expectations with stakeholders for a successful project outcome

Stakeholder Communication

Prioritized debt reduction, process improvement, and a focus on maintainability for fintech efficiency

Decreasing Tech Debt

How to present complex data insights with clarity and adaptability tailored to a specific audience

Presentations and Insights

How would you negotiate and resolve disagreements when a client rejects your proposed solution?

Client Solution Pushback

Statistics

Explain what a p-value is to someone who is not technical

P-value to a Layman

What are the assumptions of linear regression?

Assumptions of Linear Regression

What is the downside of only using the R-Squared (R^2) value to determine a relationship between two variables

Using R Squared

Explain the difference between covariance and correlation and provide an example

Covariance vs Correlation

How do you detect and handle correlation between variables in linear regression, and what happens if you ignore it

Correlation in Regression

Tell me about a data project that didn’t go the way you expected. What did you set out to do, what surprised you, and how did you handle it?

Given an integer <code>N</code>, write a function that returns a list of all of the prime numbers up to <code>N</code>.

Note: Return an empty list there are no prime numbers less than or equal to <code>N</code>.

Example:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>N = 3
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>def prime_numbers(N) -&gt; [2,3]
</code></pre>

You have an array of integers, <code>nums</code> of length <code>n</code> spanning <code>0</code> to <code>n</code> with one missing. Write a function <code>missing_number</code> that returns the missing number in the array.

Note: Complexity of $O(n)$ required.

Example:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>nums = [0,1,2,4,5] 
missing_number(nums) -&gt; 3
</code></pre>

Let’s say that you work at a bank that wants to build a model to detect fraud on the platform.

The bank wants to implement a text messaging service in addition that will text customers when the model detects a fraudulent transaction in order for the customer to approve or deny the transaction with a text response.

How would we build this model?

Let’s say that you work at a bank that wants to build a model to detect fraud on the platform.

The bank wants to implement a text messaging service that will text customers when the model detects a fraudulent transaction in order for the customer to approve or deny the transaction with a text response.

Which statement is true?

Let's say that you work at a bank that wants to build a model to detect fraud on the platform.

The bank wants to implement a text messaging service that will text customers when the model detects a fraudulent transaction in order for the customer to approve or deny the transaction with a text response.

Which statement is true?

You’re given a string that may contain the characters <code>{</code>, <code>}</code>, <code>[</code>, <code>]</code>, <code>(</code>, and <code>)</code>.

Task: Verify that the string is balanced. A balanced string is one where every opening character, <code>{</code>, <code>[</code>, or <code>(</code>, has a corresponding closing character, <code>}</code>, <code>]</code>, or <code>)</code>.

Write a function called <code>is_balanced(string: str) -&gt; bool</code> which verifies the balance of a string.

Example:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>is_balanced(&#39;(())[]{}&#39;) -&gt; True
</code></pre>

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>is_balanced(&#39;{([(){}])()}&#39;) -&gt; True
</code></pre>

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>is_balanced(&#39;{}[]())&#39;) -&gt; False
</code></pre>

<hr/>

Write a function that tests whether a string of brackets is balanced.

The Brackets Problem

Say you are tasked with designing a data mart or data warehouse for a new online retailer.

How would you design the system?

Note: Sketch a star schema to explain your design.

Design a data warehouse for a new online retailer

Retailer Data Warehouse

Data Modeling

Let’s say we want to build a model to predict booking prices on Airbnb.

Between linear regression and random forest regression, which model would perform better and why?

What are the two key concepts of random forest regression?

What are the two key concepts of random forest regression?

Let’s say we’re comparing two machine learning algorithms. In which case would you use a bagging algorithm versus a boosting algorithm? 

Give an example of the tradeoffs between the two.

In machine learning, when would you use a bagging algorithm over a boosting algorithm?

In machine learning, when would you use a bagging algorithm over a boosting algorithm?

Bagging vs. Boosting

In which case would you use a bagging algorithm versus a boosting algorithm

Bagging vs Boosting

How does random forest generate the forest? Additionally, why would we use it over other algorithms such as logistic regression?

What happens when you average the output on multiple decision trees?

What happens when you average the output on multiple decision trees?

Average Trees

How does random forest generate the forest and why use it over logistic regression

Random Forest Explanation

How would you explain what a p-value is to someone who is not technical?

What does a p-value in a statistical test represent?

What does a p-value in a statistical test represent?

P-value to a Layman I

In a statistical test, how does a low p-value (less than 0.05) influence our decision about the null hypothesis?

In a statistical test, how does a low p-value (less than 0.05) influence our decision about the null hypothesis?

P-value to a Layman II

What’s the difference between Lasso and Ridge Regression?

Under what circumstances is it recommended to use Lasso regression over Ridge regression?

Under what circumstances is it recommended to use Lasso regression over Ridge regression?

Say you are tasked with analyzing how well a model fits the data given. You want to determine a relationship between two variables.

What is the downside of only using the R-Squared $(R^2)$ value to do so?

In the context of regression analysis, why is it misleading to rely solely on a high R-squared ($R^2$) value to infer a causal relationship between variables?

In the context of regression analysis, why is it misleading to rely solely on a high R-squared ($R^2$) value to infer a causal relationship between variables?

Using R Squared I

Which of the following best describes the R-squared ($R^2$) value in the context of a regression model?

Which of the following best describes the R-squared ($R^2$) value in the context of a regression model?

Using R Squared II

What is a limitation of using R-squared ($R^2$) as the only metric to evaluate a regression model's fit?

What is a limitation of using R-squared ($R^2$) as the only metric to evaluate a regression model's fit?

Using R Squared III

What is the difference between covariance and correlation? Provide an example.

What are the assumptions of linear regression?

Which assumption of the residuals of the standard linear regression model can not be overcome by increasing the sample size?

Regression assumptions

Given a <code>ListNode</code> representing the head of a linked list, write a function <code>is_cyclic</code> which returns <code>True</code> if a linked list is cyclic and <code>False</code> if it is not. A linked list is cyclic when there is no tail to the linked list, and the supposed tail is attached to another node inside the list itself, creating a cycle.

A <code>ListNode</code> is defined as:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>class ListNode:
	value: ListNode = None
 next: ListNode = None
</code></pre>

Example:

Input:

<img src="/s3/questions/1a65651d-a483-4481-b073-2738d65ab9d7.png" alt="image"/>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>def is_cyclic(head) -&gt; True
</code></pre>

Cyclic Detection

Why would the same machine learning algorithm generate different success rates using the same dataset?

Note: When they ask us an ambiguous question, we need to gather context and restate it in a way that’s clear for us to answer.

Three zebras are chilling in the desert. Suddenly a lion attacks.
Each zebra is sitting on a corner of a triangle with sides of equal length.
Each zebra randomly picks a direction and only runs along the outline of the triangle to either edge of the triangle.

What is the probability that none of the zebras collide?

Three zebras are chilling in the desert. Suddenly a lion attacks.

Each zebra is sitting on a corner of a triangle with side of equal length. Each zebra randomly picks a direction and only runs along the outline of the triangle to either edge of the triangle.

What is the probability that none of the zebras collide?

Three zebras are chilling in the desert. Suddenly a lion attacks.

Each zebra is sitting on a corner of a triangle with side of equal length.  Each zebra randomly picks a direction and only runs along the outline of the triangle to either edge of the triangle.

What is the probability that none of the zebras collide?



Three Zebras

Brainteasers

Given a list of integers, identify all the duplicate values in the list. Assume that the list can contain both positive and negative numbers, and the order of the list does not matter. A number is considered a duplicate if it appears more than once in the list. Return a list of the duplicate numbers.

Example 1:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>nums = [1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3]
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>find_duplicates(nums) -&gt; [1, 2, 3]
</code></pre>

The numbers 1, 2, and 3 all appear more than once in the list, so they are considered duplicates.

Example 2:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>nums = [1, -1, 2, 3, 3, -1]
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>find_duplicates(nums) -&gt; [-1, 3]
</code></pre>

The numbers -1 and 3 both appear more than once in the list, so they are considered duplicates. Note that the order of the output does not matter.

Example 3:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>nums = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>find_duplicates(nums) -&gt; []
</code></pre>

None of the numbers in the list appear more than once, so there are no duplicates.

An electronics retail company tracks its sales and wants to run a performance analysis. They’re hoping to categorize sales into different groups, based on the amount of sales and the region where the sale occurred. The conditions for categorization are:

<ul>
<li>Standard Sales: Any sales below 2000 are considered standard, except if they occur in the <code>East</code> region, or in the month of July.</li>
<li>Premium Sales: Any sales that are over or equal to 2000, or any sales in the <code>East</code> region (regardless of the amount), are considered premium, except again during the month of July.</li>
<li>Promotional Sales: All sales made in the promotional period of July, regardless of the amount or region, are considered promotional.</li>
</ul>

The company wants a report that sums these amounts by region to help with financial planning and bonus allocations.

Note: You may assume that table contains data only for 2023

Example:

Input:

<code>sales</code> table

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

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

<tr>
<td><code>employee_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>product_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>sale_amount</code></td>
<td>FLOAT</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>sale_date</code></td>
<td>DATE</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>region</code></td>
<td>TEXT</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output:

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

<tbody>
<tr>
<td><code>region</code></td>
<td>TEXT</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>total_sales</code></td>
<td>FLOAT</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>premium_sales</code></td>
<td>FLOAT</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>standard_sales</code></td>
<td>FLOAT</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>promotional_sales</code></td>
<td>FLOAT</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Categorize sales based on the amount of sales and the region

Categorize Sales

Given two strings, write a function to return <code>True</code> if the strings are anagrams of each other and <code>False</code> if they are not.

Note: A word is not an anagram of itself.

Example 1:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>string_1 = &#34;listen&#34;
string_2 = &#34;silent&#34;
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>True
</code></pre>

Example 2:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>string_1 = &#34;banana&#34;
string_2 = &#34;bandana&#34;
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>False
</code></pre>

Write a function to return True if two strings are anagrams of each other and False if they are not

Valid Anagram

Given a 2-D matrix P of predicted values and actual values, write a function precision_recall to calculate precision and recall metrics.

Return the ordered pair (precision, recall).

Example:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>
P = [[121, 9],
 [17, 144]]
</code></pre>

where P represents the following table

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th></th>
<th>Predicted =TRUE</th>
<th>Predicted =FALSE</th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Actual =TRUE</td>
<td>121</td>
<td>9</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>Actual =FALSE</td>
<td>17</td>
<td>144</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>def precision_recall(P) -&gt; (0.931, 0.877,)
</code></pre>

Write a function to calculate precision and recall metrics.

Precision and Recall

Write a Python function called <code>longest_increasing_subsequence</code> that takes a list of integers as input and returns as output the length of the longest increasing subsequence in the list.

Note: An increasing subsequence is a subset of a list where the elements are in strictly increasing order. The subsequence does not have to be contiguous or unique.

<h3>Example:</h3>

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>nums = [10, 9, 2, 5, 3, 3, 7, 101, 18]
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>4
</code></pre>

Explanation:

The longest increasing subsequence is <code>[2, 3, 7, 101]</code>, for a total length of 4.

Find the longest increasing subsequence in a list of integers.

Longest Increasing Subsequence

Let’s say that you work for an E-commerce store. A new marketing manager joins the company and redesigns the existing new-user email journey to try and boost customer conversion rates. A few weeks after launching the new email journey, the new-user to customer conversion rate goes up from 40% to 43%.

Before you can celebrate, the company’s CMO points out a troubling fact. Just a few months prior to the new manager starting the conversion rate already stood at 45%, before slowly dropping down to the “starting” 40%.

How would you investigate if the redesigned email campaign actually led to the increase in the conversion rate, and that the increase wasn’t instead the result of other factors?

What would be an appropriate method to investigate whether the redesigned email campaign led to an increase in the conversion rate of an E-commerce store, in the absence of infrastructure for an AB test?

What would be an appropriate method to investigate whether the redesigned email campaign led to an increase in the conversion rate of an E-commerce store, in the absence of infrastructure for an AB test?

Causal Email Journey

Given an array and a target integer, write a function <code>sum_pair_indices</code> that returns the indices of two integers in the array that add up to the target integer. If not found, just return an empty list.

Note: Can you do it on $O(n)$ time?

Note: Even though there could be many solutions, only one needs to be returned.

Example 1:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>array = [1 2 3 4] 
target = 5 
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>def sum_pair_indices(array, target) -&gt; [0 3] or [1 2]
</code></pre>

Example 2:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>array = [3]
target = 6 
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>Do NOT return [0 0] as you can&#39;t use an index twice.
</code></pre>

What are the key differences between classification models and regression models?

What is the MOST important difference between regression and classification models?

What is the MOST important difference between regression and classification models?

Classification vs Regression

Explain the key differences between classification models and regression models

Classification and Regression

You’re a data scientist at YouTube. Leadership wants to revisit how the platform measures success, not for a specific new feature, but for the product as a whole given its current state.

How would you define and measure success for YouTube? Identify your primary and secondary metrics, explain your rationale for each, and discuss how you would choose the right thresholds for any engagement-based metrics you propose.

The role of A/B testing in measuring the success rate of an analytics experiment

Success Measurement

Product Sense & Metrics

You’re AI engineer working on an energy forecasting system at Siemens that helps utilities predict short-term electricity demand to balance grid load and reduce outages. You train a recurrent neural network on long historical time series (weather, calendar effects, local demand signals) to forecast energy demand.

Early in training, the model appears to learn normally, but after several epochs the loss becomes highly unstable, oscillating wildly before turning into NaNs. At the same time, training slows dramatically and the model fails to recover even after restarting from recent checkpoints.

You’ve verified that the data pipeline is correct and labels are well-aligned with inputs. No changes were made to the dataset, but increasing the sequence length or learning rate makes the problem significantly worse.

How would you investigate the cause of this training instability? What signals would you look for during debugging, and how would those findings guide the changes you make to the model or training setup?

How would you investigate the cause of this training instability?

Training Instability in Neural Networks

Given a <code>users</code> table, write a query to return only its duplicate rows.

Example:

Input:

<code>users</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>

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

Duplicate Rows

Let’s say that you work as a data scientist at a food delivery company.

You are tasked with building a model to predict food preparation times at a restaurant from the time when a customer sends in the order to when the meal is ready for the driver to pick up.

What are some reasons why measuring bias would be important in building this particular model?

What are some reasons why measuring bias would be important in building this particular model

Food Delivery Times

Given a string, write a function to determine if it is palindrome or not.

Note: A palindrome is a word/string that is read the same way forward as it is backward, e.g. <code>&#39;reviver&#39;</code>, <code>&#39;madam&#39;</code>, <code>&#39;deified&#39;</code> and <code>&#39;civic&#39;</code> are all palindromes, while <code>&#39;tree&#39;</code>, <code>&#39;music&#39;</code> and <code>&#39;person&#39;</code> are not palindromes.

Example:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>word1 = &#34;tree&#34;
word2 = &#34;radar&#34;
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>def is_palindrome(word1) -&gt; False
def is_palindrome(word2) -&gt; True
</code></pre>

Given a string, write a function to determine if it is palindrome 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

Aviation Structure Repairs, Llc Interview Questions

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