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Pinterest Interview Questions

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Pinterest Interview Guides

Data Structures & Algorithms

Compute Deviation

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

Merge Sorted Lists

Find Bigrams

Write a function to create a single dataframe with complete addresses in the format of street, city, state, zip code.

Complete Addresses

Write a function friendship_timeline to generate an output that lists the pairs of friends with their corresponding timestamps of the friendship beginning and then the timestamp of the friendship ending. 

Friendship Timeline

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

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

Comments Histogram

Write a query that returns all neighborhoods that have 0 users.

Empty Neighborhoods

Subscription Overlap

Machine Learning

Booking Regression

How do we give each rejected applicant a reason why they got rejected?

Rejection Reason

Job Recommendation

RMS Error

Bank Fraud Model

Product Sense & Metrics

How would you investigate a decline in the average number of comments per user?

Decreasing Comments

Promoting Instagram

Threaded Comments

Group Success

Losing Users

Analytics

Write a query to create a metric that can validate and rank the queries by their search result precision.

Search Ratings

Write a query to get the distribution of the number of conversations created by each user by day in the year 2020.

Conversations Distribution

We're interested in determining if a data scientist who switches jobs more often ends up getting promoted to a manager role faster than a data scientist that stays at one job for longer. 

Career Jumping

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

Marketing Channel Metrics

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

Fraudulent Upvotes

Challenge

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

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

Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Brainteasers

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

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

Why Do You Want to Work With Us

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

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

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

Describing a data project and its challenges

Hurdles In Data Projects

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 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

Bagging vs Boosting

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

Button AB Test

A/B Testing

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?

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.

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

Strategically resolving misaligned expectations with stakeholders for a successful project outcome

Stakeholder Communication

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

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?

Testing Price Increase

Tell me about a project in which you had to clean and organize a large dataset.

Describing a real-world data cleaning and organization project

Data Cleaning Experiences

Data Pipelines

Create a class named <code>LRUCache</code> that implements the behavior expected of a Least Recently Used (LRU) Cache.

The <code>LRUCache</code> class implements the following methods:

<ul>
<li><code>__init__(self, capacity)</code> - initializes the object and takes in a capacity parameter specifying the maximum capacity of the cache.</li>
<li><code>get_if_exists(self, key) -&gt; Any|None</code> - gets a value based on a key. If the key exists, returns the associated value. If the key has expired or did not exist in the first place, returns <code>None</code>.</li>
<li><code>put(self, key, value)</code> - places a value inside the cache. In the case wherein the cache is full, invalidates the least recently used element. When two keys collide, the older value should be invalidated in place of the new one.</li>
</ul>

Example:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>cache = LRUCache(2)
cache.put(&#34;sample&#34;, 55)
cache.get_if_exists(&#34;sample&#34;) # returns 55
cache.get_if_exists(&#34;key&#34;) # returns None
cache.put(&#34;hello&#34;, 10) 
cache.put(&#34;sample&#34;, 9)
cache.put(&#34;world&#34;, 5)
cache.get_if_exists(&#34;hello&#34;) # returns None
</code></pre>

Notes:

<ul>
<li>It is assured that the value in the <code>put</code> method will never receive a <code>None</code> value. Moreover, it is assured that the capacity will always be &gt; 0.</li>

<li>All operations must be O(1).</li>

<li>Aside from Python’s standard dictionary implementation (<code>{}</code>), you may not use any other built-in data structures.</li>
</ul>

LRU Cache 1

Given an array and a target integer, write a function <code>sum_pair_indices</code> that returns the indices of two integers in the array that add up to the target integer. If not found, just return an empty list.

Note: Can you do it on \(O(n)\) time?

Note: Even though there could be many solutions, only one needs to be returned.

Example 1:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>array = [1 2 3 4] 
target = 5 
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>def sum_pair_indices(array, target) -&gt; [0 3] or [1 2]
</code></pre>

Example 2:

Input:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>array = [3]
target = 6 
</code></pre>

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>Do NOT return [0 0] as you can&#39;t use an index twice.
</code></pre>

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

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?

Experiment Validity

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?

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.).

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

<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>

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

Note: Please return only one query with each number in a different row

Example:

Input:

<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>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

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

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

When should you use one versus the other?

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

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

Regularization Example

Regularization and Validation

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?

Lasso vs Ridge

<h1>Binary Tree Validation</h1>

You are given the root of a binary tree. You need to determine if it is a valid binary search tree (BST).

A valid BST is defined as follows:

<ul>
<li>The left subtree of a node contains only nodes with values less than or equal to the node’s value.</li>
<li>The right subtree of a node contains only nodes with values greater than or equal to the node’s value.</li>
<li>Both the left and right subtrees must also be binary search trees.</li>
</ul>

Given the function <code>def is_valid_bst(root: Node) -&gt; bool:</code>, return True if the binary tree is a valid BST. Otherwise, return False.

<h3>Example:</h3>

Input:

<img src="https://d2qpirhrfplx04.cloudfront.net/9664817c-3e12-4a40-9236-8382b13f55a0.png" alt="image"/>Converted Binary Tree.png

Output:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>def is_valid_bst(Node(3)) -&gt; True
</code></pre>

Given the root node, verify if a binary search tree is valid or not.

Binary Tree Validation

Let’s say that you’re a data scientist on the engagement team. A product manager comes up to you and says that the weekly active users metric is up 5% but email notification open rates are down 2%.

What would you investigate to diagnose what’s happening?

Email Open Rate

WAU vs Open Rates

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>

Get the top 3 highest employee salaries by department

Top Three Salaries

You’re given a string that may contain the characters <code>{</code>, <code>}</code>, <code>[</code>, <code>]</code>, <code>(</code>, and <code>)</code>.

Task: Verify that the string is balanced. A balanced string is one where every opening character, <code>{</code>, <code>[</code>, or <code>(</code>, has a corresponding closing character, <code>}</code>, <code>]</code>, or <code>)</code>.

Write a function called <code>is_balanced(string: str) -&gt; bool</code> which verifies the balance of a string.

Example:

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>is_balanced(&#39;(())[]{}&#39;) -&gt; True
</code></pre>

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>is_balanced(&#39;{([(){}])()}&#39;) -&gt; True
</code></pre>

<pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code>is_balanced(&#39;{}[]())&#39;) -&gt; False
</code></pre>

<hr/>

Write a function that tests whether a string of brackets is balanced.

The Brackets Problem

In the context of hypothesis testing, what are type I errors (type one errors) and type II errors (type two errors)? What is the difference between the two?

Bonus: Describe the probability of making each type of error mathematically.

What is the difference between type I and type II errors?

Type I and II Errors

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 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?

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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