Data Scientist Interview Questions

Nicola R. - "You shouldn't hire me if you're looking for someone to simply write code in large volumes without considering the bigger picture. I'm someone who thrives on solving root problems, building, cohesive systems, and ensuring stakeholder alignment. If the priority is speed over thoughtful analysis, I might not be the best fit. However, if you're looking for someone who can drive meaningful and scalable solutions, collaborate effectively, and contribute to long-term success, then I believe I'd bring s"See full answer

Roob G. - "As an application support analyst, I once encountered a situation where the business problem wasn’t clearly defined. The client had a general idea of what they wanted, but the specifics such as the workflows, system interactions, and expected outcomes were not clear. To move forward, I collaborated with the business analyst and requested both the business and system use cases to better understand the requirements. Once we had those documents, I presented the refined idea to the client for valida"See full answer

Arunima S. - "I’ll first set the purpose of Instagram Reels Ads as a product: Instagram Reels connect to Meta’s mission of building meaningful connections and build community via connecting people through visual storytelling. It’s a popular product with typically Billions of active users. The business model of Meta is largely dependent on ad revenue and Ads on Reels shall primarily be poised to improve revenue for Instagram Reels and in turn Meta, and on secondary notes the upside could be in improving produc"See full answer

Lavesh D. - "Approach - Check the product scope - social network, IG, Whatsapp, etc. Check how the metric is measured and if there are shortcomings or changes in the approach Eliminate obvious reasons like seasonality, external events, analytical pipeline changes, etc. Look for internal product changes or issues In case the hypothesis falls short, find ways to triangulate the issue PS - A real interview may not need so many questions to be asked. I am just listing down questions to validate or rej"See full answer

Aishwarya J. - "Looking into licensing data for users to match with the validity of their plans , to set up reporting okr's and metrics from the ground up and future problem sculpting for future feature additions I developed the metrics from the existing data tables , with uniform interpretation for datasets used across teams, keeping the modifications done in alignment with the requirements of the stakeholders. Hypotheses for licensing metrics was laid out in a defined manner where it was feasible to cherry"See full answer

R A. - "Company Mission: Make video communication frictionless Product: Zoom is a telecommunications tool used by companies and individuals to interact with one another. It has a freemium business model i.e. it provides some basic features to its users for free and premium features for a subscription. Features: Video and audio interactions. Built-in collaboration features. End-to-end encryption for all meetings. Recording and transcripts. Streamlined calendaring. User Base: "See full answer

KAI - "Answer: select fromcaller, count(DISTINCT tocallee) as num_calls from calls group by fromcaller having count(DISTINCT tocallee) >= 3 Setup: CREATE TABLE calls ( from_caller VARCHAR(20), to_callee VARCHAR(20) ); INSERT INTO calls (fromcaller, tocallee) VALUES ('Alice', 'Bob'), ('Charlie', 'Dave'), ('Alice', 'Frank'), ('Charlie', 'Heidi'), ('Charlie', 'Judy'); "See full answer

Sam E. - "average price per transaction would drop because we might not be considering currency exchange rates, which is much lower in India and Southeast Asia, when aggregating data globally. to define success, i'll first segment the data, separating existing markets to newer ones to check if that is the cause of the dropping average price. then i'll select a north star metric, which would be the number of completed transactions vs. attempted. i'll also track supporting metrics like usage frequency and"See full answer

Tiffany A. - "SELECT employees.first_name, managers.salary AS manager_salary FROM employees LEFT JOIN employees AS managers ON employees.manager_id = managers.id WHERE employees.salary > managers.salary `"See full answer

Hayatu H. - "Best practices for prioritizing customer service requests Prioritizing support requests is a key part of creating a customer journey optimized for maximum revenue. If you want to start using a ticket prioritization process that will boost both customer satisfaction and your bottom line, we've got nine proven best practices below: Respond to your most loyal customers first Tag repeat customers as high-priority tickets Automate simple requests wherever possible Mark tickets with urg"See full answer

Richard W. - "int getMaxWater(vector& nums) { int n = nums.size(); int mx = INT_MIN; int i=0, j=n-1; while(i<j) { int water = (j - i) * min(nums[i], nums[j]); mx = max(mx, water); if(nums[i] < nums[j]){ i++; } else { j--; } } return mx; } `"See full answer

Aabid S. - "I work at a startup that makes software for Law Enforcement and the FBI. Our product analyzes calls being made by prison inmates and "listens" for predictors of violence and criminal behavior. Our clients are some of the top state prisons in the country. Recently one of the largest states in the country decided to evaluate our product for their prison system. I demo'd the product to the officers and they seemed to like everything. During the presentation they asked us if the product was ADA com"See full answer

Satyam S. - "Reversing a linked list is a very popular question. We have two approaches to reverse the linked list: Iterative approach and recursion approach. Iterative approach (JavaScript) function reverseLL(head){ if(head === null) return head; let prv = null; let next = null; let cur = head; while(cur){ next = cur.next; //backup cur.next = prv; prv = cur; cur = next; } head = prv; return head; } Recursion Approach (JS) function reverseLLByRecursion("See full answer

Dhruv S. - "Before proceeding, I just wanted to clarify we wanted to check for the impact of showing content from non-friends in users’ feeds, and here non-friends I would assume could be anyone, but mainly like content creators, and I am not including ads here. But I wanted to ask if there is any current logic as to what posts to show based on users' affinity to those posts, maybe basis the user engagement to Insta feed. now objective of this would be to improve the engagement of the platform, as if users"See full answer

Sukriti C. - "Lyft at its core is a marketplace with drivers and cars on the supply side, and passengers on the demand side. I would begin by dividing the goal of the dashboard into two categories : Health of the marketplace Health of the app/ reliability from a technical perspective The second one is more straightforward so I’ll briefly mention some overarching metrics I would look at and come back to it later if time allows. Health or reliability of the app can be further divided into the following -"See full answer

Kartikeya N. - "Clarifying questions I am assuming the time frame for this question is irrelevant as this is a hypothetical question? : Yes Is IG prioritising the creator side or the viewer side more at the moment? : What do you think? I think it should be a balance for the long term sustenance of the network Are all these reels and views in a particular geography or globally? : Globally What is the duration for which these Views are measured? Assume a day Do we know anything about other engagemen"See full answer

Sreeram reddy B. - "select employeename, employeeid, salary, department, DR from ( select employeename, employeeid, salary, dense_rank() over (partition by department order by salary desc) DR, department from employee ) where DR <=3 order by department, DR"See full answer

Salome L. - "SELECT MIN(id) AS id, TRIM(LOWER(email)) AS cleaned_email FROM users GROUP BY cleaned_email ORDER BY id `"See full answer

Mohammad M. - "Clarifying questions What is Facebook Events How does this work Is it only desktop based or app based as well Why Meta built it Core idea/tenet for Facebook is to have user engagement & to build everything around it. While people continue to interact with Facebook and create content on it, to increase the duration of engagement, having capability to host virtual events ensures community participation and making Facebook go beyond status and photo updates and let people coordinate"See full answer

Patrick B. - "Why do we have FB dating? How does it fit within FB's mission of connecting people and building community? Research shows that lonely people have worse health outcomes, get sick more easily, die faster, etc. There are many ways to solve for loneliness. FB already has Groups which connect people based on shared interests/hobbies. FB also has Messengers and other apps that help you connect with people you already know. Dating is an important way FB can help people form more intimate connections a"See full answer