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Select the 2nd highest salary in the engineering department

2nd Highest Salary

Customer Orders

Average Order Value

Monthly Customer Report

There was a robbery from the ATM at the bank where you work. Some unauthorized withdrawals were made, and you need to help your bank find out more about those withdrawals.

ATM Robbery

Machine Learning

Coefficients of Logistic Regression

Booking Regression

Lasso vs Ridge

Bagging vs Boosting

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

Softmax vs Logistic

A/B Testing

Delivery Estimate Model

Button AB Test

Precisely ascertain whether the outcomes of an A/B test, executed to assess the impact of a landing page redesign, exhibit statistical significance.

Statistically Significant Test

How would you measure the success of a banner ad strategy?

Banner Ad Strategy Success

Delivery Online

Behavioral

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

Why Do You Want to Work With Us

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

Business Case

Declining Applicants

Friend Requests Down

Game Feature Home

Customer Success vs. Free Trial

Google Docs Drop

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

Describe a data project you worked on. What were some of the challenges you faced?

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

P-value to a Layman

Statistics

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

What are the assumptions of linear regression?

Assumptions of Linear Regression

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’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

Talk about a time when you had trouble communicating with stakeholders. How were you able to overcome it?

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.

String Palindromes

Data Structures & Algorithms

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>

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

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

Random Forest Explanation

What is the difference between Logistic and Linear Regression?

When would use one instead of the other in practice?

What is the difference between Logistic and Linear Regression?

Linear vs Logistic Regression

A team wants to A/B test multiple different changes through a sign-up funnel.

For example, on a page, a button is currently red and at the top of the page. They want to see if changing a button from red to blue and/or from the top of the page to the bottom of the page will increase click-through.

How would you set up this test?

Your team wants to run an AB test on the color (red or blue) and position (top/bottom of the page) of a button that links to a promotion.

How many different variants of the test should you run to see the effect that a red button has on the bottom of the page, if currently the button is blue and on the top of the page.

Your team wants to run an AB test on the color (red or blue) and position (top/bottom of the page) of a button that links to a promotion.

How many different variants of the test should you run to see the effect that a red button has on the bottom of the page, if currently the button is blue and on the top of the page.

A/B Test Variants

Let’s say we want to launch a re-design of a landing page to improve the click-through rate. We can do this by implementing an AB test.
Given that we launch an AB test, how would you infer if the results of the click-through rate were statistically significant or not?

How can you accurately conclude if the results of an A/B test, conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of a landing page redesign, are statistically significant?

How can you accurately conclude if the results of an A/B test, conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of a landing page redesign, are statistically significant?

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

Classification and Regression

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?

How would you convey insights and the methods you use to a non-technical audience?

Making data-driven insights actionable for those without technical expertise

Simple Explanations

Let’s say you are working on Google Docs. A product manager comes to you and asks how the product is doing. 

What are the top five metrics that you would start tracking to understand the health of Google Docs?

Docs Metrics

Product Sense & Metrics

Let’s say you’re given all the different marketing channels along with their respective marketing costs at a company called Mode, that sells B2B analytics dashboards.

What metrics would you use to determine the value of each marketing channel?

When determining the value of each marketing channel for the company Mode, which metric is considered the key metric?

When determining the value of each marketing channel for the company Mode, which metric is considered the key metric?

Marketing Channel Metrics

What metrics would you use to determine the value of each marketing channel?

Analytics

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>

Valid Anagram

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.

Explaining Linear Regression to Different Audiences

Let’s you’re tasked with pitching a new feature for Google Home. Your co-worker comes to you with an idea to build a game feature for Google Home.

How would you go about deciding whether Google should build it?

Let’s say we want to build a new delivery time estimate model for consumers ordering food delivery.

How would you determine if the new model predicts delivery times better than the old model?

When rolling out a new delivery time estimate model in production, what is an important consideration?

When rolling out a new delivery time estimate model in production, what is an important consideration?

Delivery Estimate Model I

What is one way to measure the performance of a new delivery time estimate model for food delivery?

What is one way to measure the performance of a new delivery time estimate model for food delivery?

Delivery Estimate Model II

How would you interpret coefficients of logistic regression for categorical and boolean variables?

Why is one-hot encoding recommended for categorical variables in logistic regression models?

Why is one-hot encoding recommended for categorical variables in logistic regression models?

How comfortable are you presenting your insights?

Describe an analytics experiment that you designed. How were you able to measure success?

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

Success Measurement

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?

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

Let’s say you’re a data scientist at LinkedIn where you’re working on a product that sends qualified job candidates to companies. The team has launched a new feature that allows candidates to message hiring managers at companies directly during the interview process to get updates on their status.

Due to engineering constraints, the company can’t AB test the feature before launching it.

How would you analyze how the feature is performing?

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

Columbia Sportswear Interview Questions

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Challenge

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Discussion & Interview Experiences

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