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Constellation Brands Interview Questions

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A/B Testing

Experiment Validity

Delivery Estimate Model

Button AB Test

A/B Test Power Size

Network Experiment Design

Machine Learning

Encoding Categorical Features

RMS Error

Lasso vs Ridge

Bagging vs Boosting

Food Delivery Times

Product Sense & Metrics

How do we measure the success of acquiring new users through a free trial

Netflix Retention

Group Success

WAU vs Open Rates

Instagram TV Success

Uber Eats Success

Data Structures & Algorithms

Write a function to find the best days to buy and sell a stock and the profit you generate from the sale.

Buy or Sell

String Shift

Weekly Aggregation

Given a string, write a function to find its first recurring character.

Recurring Character

Given two nonempty lists of user_ids and tips, write a function to find the user that tipped the most.

Biggest Tip

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

Cumulative Distribution

Given a users table, write a query to get the cumulative number of new users added by the day, with the total reset every month. 

Cumulative Reset

Download Facts

<p>When an interviewer asks a question along the lines of:</p>

<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>

<p>How would you respond?</p>


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

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

Your Strengths and Weaknesses I

<p>Which of the following is an acceptable strategy when discussing weaknesses in an interview?</p>

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

Your Strengths and Weaknesses II

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

Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Brainteasers

<p>When an interviewer asks you a question along the lines of:</p>

<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>

<p>How should you respond?</p>


<p>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?</p>

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Do You Want to Work With Us

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


Describing a data project and its challenges

Hurdles In Data Projects

Analytics

<p>What are the assumptions of linear regression?</p>


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

Statistics

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

<p>Give an example of the tradeoffs between the two.</p>


<p>In machine learning, when would you use a bagging algorithm over a boosting algorithm?</p>


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

Bagging vs. Boosting

<p>Write a SQL query to select the 2nd highest salary in the engineering department.</p>

<p><strong>Note:</strong> If more than one person shares the highest salary, the query should select the next highest salary.</p>

<p><strong>Example:</strong></p>

<p><strong>Input:</strong></p>

<p><code>employees</code> table</p>

<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>
<p><code>departments</code> table</p>

<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>
<p><strong>Output:</strong></p>

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

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


<p>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.</p>

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


Bias vs. Variance Tradeoff

<p>Explain the difference between the XGBoost and random forest algorithms and give an example where you would use one over the other.</p>


<p>Why might a data scientist choose to use XGBoost instead of Random Forest for a particular machine learning task?</p>


Why might a data scientist choose to use XGBoost instead of Random Forest for a particular machine learning task?

XGBoost vs Random Forest: Choice

Xgboost vs Random Forest

<p>What is the difference between Logistic and Linear Regression?</p>

<p>When would use one instead of the other in practice?</p>


What is the difference between Logistic and Linear Regression?

Linear vs Logistic Regression

<p>Let’s say that you work at a B2B SAAS company that’s interested in testing the pricing of different levels of subscriptions.</p>

<p>Your project manager comes to you and asks you to run a two-week-long A/B test to test an increase in pricing.</p>

<p>How would you approach designing this test?  How would you determine whether the increase in pricing is a good business decision?</p>


Testing Price Increase

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

<p>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.</p>

<p>How would you set up this test?</p>


<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>


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

<p>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?</p>


<p>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?</p>


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?

Statistically Significant Test

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

<p>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.</p>

<p>How would you assess the validity of the result?</p>


<p>Let’s say you work at Allstate. Allstate is running <code>N</code>  online ads right now. The table <code>ads</code> contains all those ads, ranked by popularity via the <code>id</code> column (e.g., the entry with <code>id = 1</code> is the most popular, etc.).</p>

<p>Create a subquery or common table expression named <code>top_ads</code> containing the top 3 ads (by popularity) and return the number of rows that would result from the following operations</p>

<ol>
<li><code>ads INNER JOIN top_ads</code></li>
<li><code>ads LEFT JOIN top_ads</code></li>
<li><code>ads RIGHT JOIN top_ads</code></li>
<li><code>ads CROSS JOIN top_ads</code></li>
</ol>

<p><em>Note: Please make the <code>join_type</code> column in your output have the values <code>inner_join</code>, <code>left_join</code>, etc. for each of their respective join types</em></p>

<p><em>Note: Please return only one query with each number in a different row</em></p>

<p><strong>Example:</strong></p>

<p><strong>Input:</strong></p>

<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>
<p><strong>Output:</strong></p>

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

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

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


Size of Joins

<p>Regularization and cross-validation are two common techniques used to improve the performance of machine learning algorithms.</p>

<p>When should you use one versus the other?</p>


<p>Given the choices below, which one is an example of a scenario where we should be using regularization?</p>


Given the choices below, which one is an example of a scenario where we should be using regularization?

Regularization Example

Regularization and Validation

<p>What’s the difference between Lasso and Ridge Regression?</p>


<p>Under what circumstances is it recommended to use Lasso regression over Ridge regression?</p>

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

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

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


Docs Metrics

<p>What’s the relationship between PCA and K-means clustering?</p>


<p>What does the variable “k” in k-means clustering refer to?</p>


What does the variable "k" in k-means clustering refer to?

Input of K-means

PCA and K-Means

<p>How would you explain the bias variance tradeoff in machine learning to a high school student?</p>


Replaced by QUESTION 791 - Should be deleted

Bias Variance Tradeoff

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

<p>How would you make a control group and test group to account for network effects?</p>


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

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

<p>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?</p>

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

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

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

Network Experiment Design III

<p>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.</p>

<p>What metrics would you use to determine the value of each marketing channel?</p>


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

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?

<p>How do you detect and handle correlation between variables in linear regression? What will happen if you ignore the correlation in the regression model?</p>


Correlation in Regression

<p>Let’s say you’re analyzing an AB test that has both a test group and a control group.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>How do you calculate the sample size necessary for an accurate measurement?</p></li>

<li><p>Let’s say that the sample size is similar and sufficient between the two groups. In order to measure very small differences between the two, should the power get bigger or smaller?</p></li>
</ol>


<p>What is a confidence interval for a statistic? Why is it useful to know the confidence interval for a statistic and how do you calculate it?</p>


What are confidence intervals and how are they useful

Confidence Interval Explanation

<p>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.</p>

<p><strong>Example:</strong></p>

<p><strong>Input:</strong></p>

<p><code>employees</code> table</p>

<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>
<p><code>departments</code> table</p>

<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>
<p><strong>Output:</strong></p>

<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>


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

<p>How would you determine if the new model predicts delivery times better than the old model?</p>


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

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

Delivery Estimate Model I

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

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

Delivery Estimate Model II

<p>How would you choose the <em>k</em> value when using <em>k</em>-means clustering?</p>


choosing k value during k-means clustering

Choosing k

<p>How would you measure the success of Facebook Groups?</p>


<p>Considering the purpose of Facebook Groups as a platform for connecting users through shared interests or real-life relationships, which metrics would be appropriate to measure the success of these groups?</p>


Considering the purpose of Facebook Groups as a platform for connecting users through shared interests or real-life relationships, which metrics would be appropriate to measure the success of these groups?

<p>Let’s say we’re testing a new UI with the goal to increase conversion rates. We test it by giving the new UI to a random subset of users.</p>

<p>The test variant wins by 5% on the target metric. What would you expect to happen after the new UI is applied to all users? Will the metric actually go up by ~5%, more, or less?</p>

<p><em>Note: Assume there is no novelty effect.</em></p>


New UI Effect

<p>What do you think are the most important metrics for WhatsApp?</p>


<p>What is the optimal strategy for reducing customer churn rate in a messaging platform like WhatsApp?</p>


What is the optimal strategy for reducing customer churn rate in a messaging platform like WhatsApp?

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

Constellation Brands Interview Questions

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