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Consumer Reports Interview Questions

Consumer Reports Interview Guides

Data Structures & Algorithms

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

Merge Sorted Lists

Write a function moving_window to find the moving window average

Moving Window

Given a dictionary consisting of many roots and a sentence, write a function to stem all the words in the sentence with the root forming it.

Replace Words with Stems

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

Write a function to rotate an array by 90 degrees in the clockwise direction.

Matrix Rotation

Machine Learning

Which model would perform better and why?

Booking Regression

How do we deal with the missing square footage data to construct our model

Missing Housing Data

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

Bank Fraud Model

Lasso vs Ridge

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

Bagging vs Boosting

A/B Testing

How would you assess the validity of the result?

Experiment Validity

Button AB Test

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

Delivery Estimate Model

A/B Test Power Size

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

Network Experiment Design

Analytics

We want to figure out if users are creating multiple accounts to upvote their own comments.

Fraudulent Upvotes

Create and write queries for health metrics for stack overflow 

Community Health Metrics

Achieving maximum profits through dynamic pricing with real-time supply and demand fluctuations

Understanding Dynamic Pricing Strategy

How would you increase the user engagement of a certain demographic?

Romantic Reduction

What kind of analysis would you conduct to recommend changes to the UI?

User Journey Analysis

Behavioral

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

Describing a data project and its challenges

Hurdles In Data Projects

Making data-driven insights actionable for those without technical expertise

Simple Explanations

You have a heavily imbalanced model that classifies chest X-rays into four ordered severity grades. How would you evaluate its predictions, what does mean absolute error add beyond accuracy, and what can a low average error hide about the rarest class?

Use grades 0 through 3 as an explicit practice coding assumption. Explain your reasoning with a small example; rank distance is not assumed to be a measure of clinical consequences.

How would you evaluate an imbalanced classifier over four ordered severity grades, and what does mean absolute error add over accuracy?

Ordinal Severity Metrics

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 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?

Given a table of product subscriptions with a subscription start date and end date for each user, write a query that returns true or false whether or not each user has a subscription date range that overlaps with any other completed subscription.

Completed subscriptions have <code>end_date</code> recorded.

Example:

Input:

<code>subscriptions</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>start_date</code></td>
<td>DATETIME</td>
</tr>

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

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th><code>user_id</code></th>
<th><code>start_date</code></th>
<th><code>end_date</code></th>
</tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>2019-01-01</td>
<td>2019-01-31</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>2</td>
<td>2019-01-15</td>
<td>2019-01-17</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>3</td>
<td>2019-01-29</td>
<td>2019-02-04</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>4</td>
<td>2019-02-05</td>
<td>2019-02-10</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Output:

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

<tbody>
<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>1</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>2</td>
<td>1</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>3</td>
<td>1</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>4</td>
<td>0</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Write a query to return whether each user's subscription date range overlaps with any other completed subscription

Subscription Overlap

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>

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

First Touch Attribution

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

Let’s say we are given a table <code>user_logins</code>.

Using this table, calculate how many users logged in an identical number of times on January 1st, 2022.

For example, it may be the case that on that date three users logged in seven times, four users logged in five times, two users logged in ten times, etc.

Example:

Input:

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

<tr>
<td><code>login_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>number_of_logins</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>

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

Find how many users logged in a certain number of times on a given day

Daily Logins

Let’s say you work at a file-hosting website. You have information on user’s daily downloads in the <code>download_facts</code> table

Use the window function <code>RANK</code> to display the top three users by downloads each day. Order your data by <code>date</code>, and then by <code>daily_rank</code>

Example:

Input:

<code>download_facts</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>date</code></td>
<td>DATE</td>
</tr>

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

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

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

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

<tr>
<td><code>date</code></td>
<td>DATE</td>
</tr>

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

Write a query to display the top three users by downloads each day

Top 3 Users

Write a query that creates an attribution rule for each user. If the user visited Facebook or Google at least once then the attribution is labeled as “paid.” Otherwise, the attribution is labeled as “organic.”

Example:

Input:

<code>user_sessions</code> table

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

<tr>
<td><code>user_id</code></td>
<td>INTEGER</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<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>
</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>attribute</code></td>
<td>VARCHAR</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Write a query to create an attribution rule for each user

Attribution Rules

Let’s say that you’re the PM on Google Maps.

<ol>
<li>How would you improve Google Maps?</li>

<li>What metrics would you check to see if your feature improvements are successful?</li>
</ol>

Google Maps Improvement

Product Sense & Metrics

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?

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?

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 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

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 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

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

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

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

How would you design a two-week A/B test to determine whether a pricing increase is a good business decision

Testing Price Increase

In an A/B test, how can you check if assignment to the various buckets was truly random?

In an A/B test, which of the following is a common method to determine if the assignment to the test groups was truly random?

In an A/B test, which of the following is a common method to determine if the assignment to the test groups was truly random?

Random Bucketing

How can you check if assignment to the various buckets was truly random

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

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

P-value to a Layman

Statistics

Say you are given a dataset of perfectly linearly separable data.

What would happen when you run logistic regression?

What happens when logistic regression is run on a dataset of perfectly linearly separable data?

What happens when logistic regression is run on a dataset of perfectly linearly separable data?

Perfectly Separable

Say you are given a dataset of perfectly linearly separable data. What would happen when you run logistic regression?

Imagine you have been given an array of integers, and a query number <code>k</code>. Your task is to write a function that finds all the triplets in the array that sum up to the query number <code>k</code>.

Let’s illustrate this with some examples:

Example 1:

Input:

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

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>count_triplets(nums, k) -&gt; 1
</code></pre>

In this case, there is only one triplet that sums up to 6: (1, 2, 3).

Example 2:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>nums = [10, 10, 20, 30, 40]
k = 60
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>count_triplets(nums, k) -&gt; 3
</code></pre>

In this case, there are three triplets that sum up to 60: (10, 10, 40), (10, 20, 30), and (10, 20, 30).
The value 10 can be retrieved as <code>nums[0]</code> or <code>nums[1]</code>, therefore resulting in two triplets with the same value.

Write a function that returns the number of triplets in the array that sum to `k`.

Triplet Counting

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?

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

Write a Python function called <code>group_anagrams</code> that takes a list of strings as input and returns a list of lists, where each inner list contains a group of anagrams that were present in the input list.

An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once.

Note: Each of the inner lists should be ordered alphabetically and contain no duplicate values

<h3>Example:</h3>

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>words = [&#34;eat&#34;, &#34;tea&#34;, &#34;tan&#34;, &#34;ate&#34;, &#34;nat&#34;, &#34;bat&#34;]
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>[ 
 [&#34;nat&#34;,&#34;tan&#34;],
 [&#34;ate&#34;,&#34;eat&#34;, &#34;tea&#34;],
 [&#34;bat&#34;]
]
</code></pre>

Explanation:

In the example, the words “eat”, “tea”, and “ate” are anagrams of each other, as are the words “tan” and “nat”. The word “bat” does not have any anagrams in the input list, and therefore is listed on its own. The function then groups the anagrams together and returns a list of lists representing these groups.

Each of the lists representing a group of anagrams is sorted in alphabetical order.

Identify the groups of anagrams in a list of words

Groups of Anagrams

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

We want to build a model to predict housing prices in the city of Seattle. We’ve scraped 100K sold listings over the past three years but found that around 20% of the listings are missing square footage data.

How do we deal with the missing data to construct our model?

We want to build a model to predict housing prices in the city of Seattle. We’ve scraped 100K sold listings over the past three years, but have discovered that around 20% of the listings are missing square footage data.

How would you approach dealing with this missing data, in order to construct the most useful predictive model possible?

We want to build a model to predict housing prices in the city of Seattle. We’ve scraped 100K sold listings over the past three years, but have discovered that around 20% of the listings are missing square footage data.

How would you approach dealing with this missing data, in order to construct the most useful predictive model possible?



Given a string <code>str</code> of any length, write an algorithm <code>max_repeating</code> to return which character has the longest string of continuous repetition.

If two characters are tied for most continuous repetition, return the character whose longest continuous repetition occurs earliest in <code>str</code>.

Example 1:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>str = &#39;aabbaaccbbbaa&#39;
def max_repeating(str) -&gt; b
</code></pre>

Example 2:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>str = &#39;adccccbbbbc&#39;
def max_repeating(str) -&gt; c
</code></pre>

Write an algorithm to return the character with the longest continuous repetition, breaking ties by earliest occurrence

Most Repetition

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

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

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

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

XGBoost vs Random Forest: Choice

Explain the difference between XGBoost and random forest and give an example where you would use one over the other

Xgboost vs Random Forest

In data science, there exists the concept of stemming, which is the heuristic of chopping off the end of a word to clean and bucket it into an easier feature set. 

Given a dictionary consisting of many roots and a sentence, write a function <code>replace_words</code> to stem all the words in the sentence with the root forming it. If a word has many roots that can form it, replace it with the root with the shortest length.

Example:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>
roots = [&#34;cat&#34;, &#34;bat&#34;, &#34;rat&#34;]
sentence = &#34;the cattle was rattled by the battery&#34;
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code> &#34;the cat was rat by the bat&#34;
</code></pre>

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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