Prepare for and practice interview questions from CareSource across topics like SQL, Python, Statistics and more.

CareSource Interview Questions

CareSource Interview Guides

Machine Learning

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

Bagging vs Boosting

What are the logistic and softmax functions? What is the difference between the two?

Softmax vs Logistic

How would you evaluate whether a decision tree is the right model and assess its performance before and after deployment

Decision Tree Evaluation

How will two highly correlated features appear in a random forest feature importance measurement

Correlated Features in Forests

Credit Card Fraud Model

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

Comments Histogram

Get the top 3 highest employee salaries by department

Top Three Salaries

Write a SQL query to count transactions filtered by several criterias.

Count Transactions

Write a query to find all users that were at some point "Excited" and have never been "Bored" with a campaign.

Always Excited Users

Total Spent on Products

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

Explain the difference between covariance and correlation and provide an example

Covariance vs Correlation

How would you tackle multicollinearity in multiple linear regression

Multicollinearity in Regression

What does it mean to "bootstrap" a data set?

Bootstrapping Samples

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

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

Presentations and Insights

What do you tell an interviewer when they ask you what your strengths and weaknesses are?

Your Strengths and Weaknesses

How would you answer when an Interviewer asks why you applied to their company?

Why Do You Want to Work With Us

Data Structures & Algorithms

Write a function moving_window to find the moving window average

Moving Window

Given a list of strings, write a function that returns the longest common prefix

Common Prefix

Write a Python function that adds together all combinations of adjacent integers in int_str

Integer String Addition

Swap the values of `a` and `b` in the dictionary without declaring any other variable

Swap Variables

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 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>

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

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

Let’s say you work at an advertising firm. You have a table of users’ impressions of ad campaigns over time. Each <code>impression_id</code> consists of values of user engagement specified by <code>Excited</code>, <code>OK</code>, and <code>Bored</code>.

Write a query to find all users who were at some point “Excited” and have never been “Bored” with a campaign.

Example:

Input:

<code>ad_impressions</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>dt</code></td>
<td>DATETIME</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>campaign_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>impression_id</code></td>
<td>TEXT</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>
</tbody>
</table>

Let’s say you work at Costco. Costco has a database with two tables. The first is <code>users</code> composed of user information, including their registration date, and the second is <code>purchases</code> that has the entire item purchase history (if any) for those users.

Write a query to get the total amount spent on each item in the ‘purchases’ table by users that registered in 2022.

Example:

Input:

<code>users</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>user_name</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>registration_date</code></td>
<td>DATETIME</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<code>purchases</code> table

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

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

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

<tr>
<td><code>item</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>price</code></td>
<td>FLOAT</td>
</tr>

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

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

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

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

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 that $X$ and $Y$ are independent random variables with normal distributions, what is the mean and variance of the distribution of $2X - Y$ when the corresponding distributions are $X\sim \mathcal{N}(3, 4)$ and $Y \sim \mathcal{N}(1, 4)$?

Given that $X$ and $Y$ are independent random variables with normal distributions, and the corresponding distributions are $X\sim \mathcal{N}(3, 4)$ and $Y \sim \mathcal{N}(1, 4)$, what is the mean of the distribution of $2X - Y$?

Given that $X$ and $Y$ are independent random variables with normal distributions, and the corresponding distributions are $X\sim \mathcal{N}(3, 4)$ and $Y \sim \mathcal{N}(1, 4)$, what is the mean of the distribution of $2X - Y$?

Distribution of 2X - Y I

Given that $X$ and $Y$ are independent random variables with normal distributions, and the corresponding distributions are $X\sim \mathcal{N}(3, 4)$ and $Y \sim \mathcal{N}(1, 4)$, what is the variance of the distribution of $2X - Y$?

Given that $X$ and $Y$ are independent random variables with normal distributions, and the corresponding distributions are $X\sim \mathcal{N}(3, 4)$ and $Y \sim \mathcal{N}(1, 4)$, what is the variance of the distribution of $2X - Y$?

Distribution of 2X - Y II

What is the mean and variance of 2X - Y when X~N(3, 4) and Y~N(1, 4)

Distribution of 2X - Y

Probability

Let’s say you’re interning at a fintech startup that’s building a platform for online games of chance. During testing, one of your simulations flips a coin 10 times and gets 8 tails and 2 heads.

How would you determine if the coin is fair, and what statistical approach would you use to support your conclusion?

How would you assess if a coin is fair after observing 8 tails in 10 flips?

Fair Coin

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

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?

Write a Python function that adds together all combinations of adjacent integers of a given string of integers named <code>int_str</code>.

Example 1:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>int_str = &#39;12&#39;
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>def int_str_addition -&gt; 1 + 2 + 12 = 15
</code></pre>

Example 2:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>int_str = &#39;123&#39;
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>def int_str_addition(int_str) -&gt; 1 + 2 + 3 + 12 + 23 + 123 = 164
#in this case, 13 is not part of our sum as 1 and 3 are not adjacent in &#39;123&#39;
</code></pre>

Let’s say you have analytics data stored in a data lake. An analyst tells you they need hourly, daily, and weekly active user data for a dashboard that refreshes every hour.

How would you build this data pipeline?

Design a data pipeline to compute hourly, daily, and weekly active user metrics from a data lake for an hourly-refreshing dashboard

Data Pipelines and Aggregation

Data Pipelines

How would you handle the data preparation for building a machine learning model using imbalanced data?

Addressing imbalanced data in machine learning through carefully prepared techniques.

Data Preparation for Imbalanced Data

Let’s say that you’re training a classification model.

How would you combat overfitting when building tree-based models?

Let's say that you're training a classification model.   How would you combat overfitting when building tree-based models?

Overfit Avoidance

Let’s say we have an <code>annual_payments</code> table. Answer the following three questions via SQL queries and output them as a table with the answers to each question.

<ol>
<li>How many total transactions are in this table?</li>
<li>How many different users made transactions?</li>
<li>How many transactions listed as <code>&#34;paid&#34;</code> have an amount greater or equal to 100?</li>
<li>Which product made the highest revenue? (use only transactions with a <code>&#34;paid&#34;</code> status)</li>
</ol>

Example:

Input:

<code>annual_payments</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>amount</code></td>
<td>FLOAT</td>
</tr>

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

<tr>
<td><code>status</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

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

<tr>
<td><code>amount_refunded</code></td>
<td>FLOAT</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td><code>product</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>

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

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

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

<tr>
<td><code>answer</code></td>
<td>TEXT</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Given a list of strings, write a function that returns their longest common prefix. For example, if you were given the strings <code>&#34;flowers&#34;</code>, <code>&#34;flow&#34;</code>, and <code>&#34;flight&#34;</code>, your function should return the string <code>&#34;fl&#34;</code>.

If the list of strings has no common prefix, return an empty string.

Example 1:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>strings = [&#34;flowers&#34;, &#34;flow&#34;, &#34;flight&#34;] 
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>&#34;fl&#34;
</code></pre>

Example 2:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>strings = [&#34;showboat&#34;, &#34;showcase&#34;, &#34;shower&#34;]
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>&#34;show&#34;
</code></pre>

How would you tackle multicollinearity in multiple linear regression?

What are the logistic and softmax functions? What is the difference between the two?

What makes them useful for use in logistic regression?

In logistic regression, how is the predicted class determined based on the logistic function?

In logistic regression, how is the predicted class determined based on the logistic function?

Softmax vs Logistic II

What is the key characteristic of the logistic function that makes it useful for mapping continuous values to a probability?

What is the key characteristic of the logistic function that makes it useful for mapping continuous values to a probability?

Softmax vs Logistic I

Imagine you are asked to build a machine learning model to decide new loan approvals for a
financial firm. You ask the data department in the company for a subset of data to get started
working on the problem. The data includes different features about applicants such as age,
occupation, zip code, height, number of children, favorite color, etc. You decide to build
multiple machine learning models to test out different ideas before settling on the best one.

How would you explain the bias-variance tradeoff with regards to
building and choosing a model to use?

Bias vs. Variance Tradeoff

You are given a dictionary with two keys <code>a</code> and <code>b</code> that hold integers as their values.

Without declaring any other variable, swap the value of <code>a</code> with the value of <code>b</code> and vice versa.

Note: Return the dictionary after editing it.

Example:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>numbers = {
 &#39;a&#39;:3,
 &#39;b&#39;:4
}
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>def swap_values(numbers) -&gt; {&#39;a&#39;:4,&#39;b&#39;:3}
</code></pre>

Given a list of numbers <code>nums</code> and an integer <code>window_size</code>, write a function <code>moving_window</code> to find the moving window average.

Example 1:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>nums = [1,2,3,4,5,6]
window_size = 3
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>def moving_window(input, window_size) -&gt; [1, 1.5, 2, 3, 4, 5]
</code></pre>

Example 2:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>nums = [1,2,3,4,5,6]
window_size = 4
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>def moving_window(input, window_size) -&gt; [1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5]
</code></pre>

When an interviewer asks a question along the lines of:

<ul>
<li>What would your current manager say about you? What constructive criticisms might he give?</li>
<li>What are your three biggest strengths and weaknesses you have identified in yourself?</li>
</ul>

How would you respond?

When asked about your strengths in an interview, what is an effective way to respond?

When asked about your strengths in an interview, what is an effective way to respond?

Your Strengths and Weaknesses I

Which of the following is an acceptable strategy when discussing weaknesses in an interview?

Which of the following is an acceptable strategy when discussing weaknesses in an interview?

Your Strengths and Weaknesses II

When an interviewer asks you a question along the lines of:

<ul>
<li>Why did you apply to our company?</li>
<li>What are you looking for in your next job?</li>
<li>What makes you a good fit for our company?</li>
</ul>

How should you respond?

When asked 'What are you looking for in your next job?' in an interview, how can you tie the company's employee benefits into your response?

When asked 'What are you looking for in your next job?' in an interview, how can you tie the company's employee benefits into your response?

Why Do You Want to Work With Us I

How can company values be used effectively in an interview when asked 'What makes you a good fit for our company?'

How can company values be used effectively in an interview when asked 'What makes you a good fit for our company?'

Why Do You Want to Work With Us II

When responding to the question 'Why did you apply to our company?' during an interview, what aspect should you highlight?

When responding to the question 'Why did you apply to our company?' during an interview, what aspect should you highlight?

Why Do You Want to Work With Us III

Let’s say you work for an e-commerce company. Vendors can send products to the company’s warehouse to be listed on the website. Users are able to order any in-stock products and submit returns for refunds if they’re not satisfied.

The front end of the website includes a vendor portal that provides sales data in daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly intervals.

The company wants to expand worldwide. They put you in charge of designing its end-to-end architecture, so you need to know what significant factors you’ll need to consider. What clarifying questions would you ask?

What kind of end-to-end architecture would you design for this company (both for ETL and reporting)?

How would you design a data warehouse for a e-commerce company looking to expand internationally?

International e-Commerce Warehouse

Imagine you work at a major credit card company and are given a dataset of 600,000 credit card transactions to build a fraud detection model.

How would you approach this task? Write your answer in the comments.

You work as an ML engineer for a large company. The company wants to implement a machine learning system that utilizes facial recognition to facilitate employee clock-in, clock-out, and access to secure systems. The company also hires temporary contract consultants who need to be able to use the system.

How would you design this system?

Designing a secure and user-friendly facial recognition system for employee management while prioritizing privacy and ethical considerations

Distributed Authentication Model

Concurrent & Distributed Systems

Let’s say you work as a data scientist at a bank.

You are tasked with building a decision tree model to predict if a borrower will pay back a personal loan they are taking out.

<ol>
<li>How would you evaluate whether using a decision tree algorithm is the correct model for the problem?</li>

<li>Let’s say you move forward with the decision tree model. How would you evaluate the performance of the model before deployment and after?</li>
</ol>

You work as a machine learning engineer for a health insurance company. Design a machine learning model, which given a set of health features, classifies if the individual will undergo major health issues or not.

Creating a machine learning model for evaluating a patient's health

Risk Assessment Model

How would you explain the concept of linear regression to three different audiences: a child, a first-year college student, and a seasoned mathematician? Ensure your explanations are tailored to the understanding level of each audience.

Describe linear regression to various audiences with different levels of knowledge.

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

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