Prepare for and practice interview questions from Grant Thornton across topics like Product Metrics, SQL, Statistics and more.

Grant Thornton Interview Questions

Grant Thornton Interview Guides

Machine Learning

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

Missing Housing Data

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

Bagging vs Boosting

What are some machine learning methods for building this system

FAQ Matching

What metrics would you use to track accuracy and validity of the model

Spam Classifier 

How to model merchant acquisition in a new market?

Merchant Acquisition

Data Structures & Algorithms

Write a function `sorting` from scratch to sort a list of strings in ascending alphabetical order

Sort Strings

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

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

Swap Variables

Implement a dynamic recursive fibonacci function.

Impossibly Iterative Fibonacci

Cyclic Detection

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

Why Do You Want to Work With Us

Making data-driven insights actionable for those without technical expertise

Simple Explanations

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

Your Strengths and Weaknesses

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

How would you tackle multicollinearity in multiple linear regression

Multicollinearity in Regression

Analytics

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

User Journey Analysis

Describing a real-world data cleaning and organization project

Data Cleaning Experiences

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>

Select the 2nd highest salary in the engineering department

2nd Highest Salary

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?

How would you assess the validity of the result?

Experiment Validity

A/B Testing

You are about to get on a plane to Seattle. You want to know if you should bring an umbrella. You call 3 random friends of yours who live there and ask each independently if it’s raining. Each of your friends has a 2⁄3 chance of telling you the truth and a 1⁄3 chance of messing with you by lying. All 3 friends tell you that “Yes” it is raining.

What is the probability that it’s actually raining in Seattle?

What is the main difference between the Frequentist and Bayesian methods of probabilistic analysis?

What is the **main** difference between the Frequentist and Bayesian methods of probabilistic analysis?

Frequentist Vs Bayesian Analysis

What is the probability that it's actually raining in Seattle?

Raining in Seattle

Probability

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 that you work for a software as a subscription (SAAS) company that has existed for just over a year. The chief revenue officer wants to know the average lifetime value.

We know that the product costs $100 dollars per month, averages 10% in monthly churn, and the average customer sticks around for around 3.5 months.

Calculate the formula for the average lifetime value.

If a software-as-a-subscription company has a monthly churn rate of 20% for a product that costs $100, what would be the average lifetime value of a single customer?

If a software-as-a-subscription company has a monthly churn rate of 20% for a product that costs $100, what would be the average lifetime value of a single customer?

Average Lifetime Value

Calculate the formula for the average lifetime value

Revenue Retention

Product Sense & Metrics

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 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

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

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>

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

Given a list of strings, write a function, <code>sorting</code> from scratch to sort the list in ascending alphabetical order.

Notes:
- Do NOT use the built-in <code>sorted</code> function
- Return the new sorted list, rather than modifying the list in-place

Bonus: Have your solution be $O(n log(n))$.

Example:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>array = [&#34;apple&#34;, &#34;cat&#34;, &#34;banana&#34;, &#34;zoo&#34;, &#34;football&#34;]
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>def sorting(array) -&gt; [&#34;apple&#34;, &#34;banana&#34;, &#34;cat&#34;, &#34;football&#34;, &#34;zoo&#34;]
</code></pre>

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

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.

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?



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

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

Let’s say that you work on the revenue forecasting team at a company like Facebook.

An executive comes to you asking about how much revenue Facebook will make in the coming year.

How would you forecast revenue for the next year?

How would you forecast revenue for the next year

Forecasting New Year Revenue

Forecasting & Time Series

Let’s say you are tasked with building a spam classifier for emails. Assume that you’ve built a V1 of the model.

What metrics would you use to track accuracy and validity of the model?

Let’s say that we want to build a chatbot system for frequently asked questions. Whenever a user writes a question, we want to return the closest answer from a list of FAQs.

What are some machine learning methods for building this system?

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

How would you tackle multicollinearity in multiple linear regression?

Let’s say you’re a data engineer at Fidelity Investments, and you’re running a SQL query on a cloud-based data warehouse. All cluster resources and network health metrics look normal, but the query is still taking over 10 minutes to complete.

How would you go about diagnosing and improving the performance of this query?

How would you diagnose and speed up a slow SQL query when system metrics look healthy?

Slow SQL Query

Query Optimization

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>

Let’s say we work at L’Oréal, and the e-commerce team has noticed that about 8% of online beauty product orders are delivered late each week.

How would you frame this as a data science problem, choose an algorithm to address it, and describe your plan for deploying the solution?

How would you solve for late deliveries using data science at L'Oréal?

Late Deliveries

Supply Chain

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

You work on an artificial intelligence team at ABC Neural Inc. Your client, the New York City Transit Authority, provides an hourly feed of subway ridership data (entries and exits) for the NYC Subway system. Your task is to predict the number of riders each hour for each subway station.

Design and outline a solution (both functional and non-functional requirements) that takes the hourly ridership data as input and delivers predictions of hourly ridership back to the client. Predictions must be consistently updated as new data arrives, and the end product will be integrated into the client’s internal systems.

Design a machine learning solution to predict hourly subway ridership for each NYC subway station using hourly entry and exit data

Subway Machine Learning Model

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

Let’s say we’ve just delivered a product recommendation algorithm to a retail client, and it’s performing well on their current data.

How would you make sure this algorithm remains reliable and effective as the client’s customer preferences and product catalog evolve over the next year?

How would you ensure a delivered recommendation algorithm stays reliable as business data and preferences change?

Algorithm Reliability

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?

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

Grant Thornton Interview Questions

Grant Thornton Interview Guides

Grant Thornton Interview Questions

Challenge

Grant Thornton Salaries by Position

Discussion & Interview Experiences

Discussion & Interview Experiences