DATA SCIENCE

Interview Guide
Lead the Data
Science Revolution
Harvard Business Review referred to of qualified candidates worldwide.
data scientist as the “Sexiest Job of If you’re moving down the path to
the 21st Century.” Glassdoor placed becoming a data scientist, you must
it #1 on the 25 Best Jobs in America be prepared to impress prospective
list. According to IBM, demand for employers with your knowledge.
this role will soar 28 percent by 2020. In addition to explaining why data
It’s unwise to ignore the importance science is so important, you’ll need to
of data and our capacity to analyze, show that you're technically proficient
consolidate, and contextualize it. And with Big Data concepts, frameworks,
it should come as no surprise that and applications.
companies that are able to leverage
But nothing to worry about. We have
massive amounts of data to improve
clubbed a list of the most popular
the way they serve customers, build
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products, and run their operations
interview. So prepare ahead of time,
will be positioned to thrive in this
and crack your Data Science interview
economy.
in the first go.
Data scientists are relied upon to fill
this need, but there is a serious lack

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 Interview Guide

Topics
Covered

♦ Supervised learning algorithms

♦ Unsupervised learning algorithms

♦ Time series analysis

♦ Statistics

♦ SQL

♦ Model building

♦ Advanced Data Science concepts

♦ Scenario based questions

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 Interview Guide

1) What are the differences between supervised and

unsupervised learning?

Supervised Learning Unsupervised Learning

Uses known and labeled data as input

Uses unlabeled data as input

Supervised learning has a feedback

Unsupervised learning has no
mechanism feedback mechanism

Most commonly used supervised Most commonly used unsupervised

learning algorithms are decision learning algorithms are k-means
trees, logistic regression, and support clustering, hierarchical clustering,
vector machine and apriori algorithm

2) How is logistic regression done?

Logistic regression measures the relationship between the dependent

variable (our label of what we want to predict) and one or more
independent variables (our features) by estimating probability using its
underlying logistic function (sigmoid).

The image shown below depicts how logistic regression works:

The formula and graph for the sigmoid function is as shown:

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3) Explain the steps in making a decision tree.

1.) Take the entire data set as input

2.) Calculate entropy of the target variable, as well as the

predictor attributes

3.) Calculate your information gain of all attributes (we gain

information on sorting different objects from each other)

4.) Choose the attribute with the highest information gain

as the root node

5.) Repeat the same procedure on every branch until the

decision node of each branch is finalized

For example, let’s say you want to build a decision tree to decide
whether you should accept or decline a job offer. The decision tree for
this case is as shown:

It is clear from the decision tree that an offer is accepted if:

Salary is greater than $50,000

Commute is less than an hour

Incentives are offered

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4) How do you build a random forest model?

A random forest is built up of a number of decision trees. If you split

the data into different packages and make a decision tree in each of
the different groups of data, the random forest brings all those trees
together.

Steps to build a random forest model:

1.) Randomly select ‘k’ features from a total of ‘m’ features

where k << m

2.) Among the ‘k’ features, calculate the node D using

the best split point

3.) Split the node into daughter nodes using the best split

4.) Repeat steps two and three until leaf nodes are finalized

5.) Build forest by repeating steps one to four for ‘n’ times to create ‘n’
number of trees

5) How can you avoid overfitting of your model?

Overfitting refers to a model that is only set for a very small amount of
data and ignores the bigger picture. There are three main methods to
avoid overfitting:

1.) Keep the model simple—take fewer variables into account, thereby
removing some of the noise in the training data

2.) Use cross-validation techniques, such as k folds cross-validation

3.) Use regularization techniques, such as LASSO, that penalize certain

model parameters if they're likely to cause overfitting

6) Differentiate between univariate, bivariate, and multivariate

analysis.
Univariate

Univariate data contains only one variable. The purpose of the

univariate analysis is to describe the data and find patterns that exist
within it.

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Example: height of students

Height (in cm)

164

167.3

170

174.2

178

180

The patterns can be studied by drawing conclusions using mean,

median, mode, dispersion or range, minimum, maximum, etc.

Bivariate

Bivariate data involves two different variables. The analysis of this type
of data deals with causes and relationships and the analysis is done to
determine the relationship between the two variables.

Example: Temperature and ice cream sales in the summer season

Temperature (in Celcius) Sales

20
2,000
25 2,100
26
2,300
28
2,400
30
2,600
36 3,100

Here, the relationship is visible from the table that temperature

and sales are directly proportional to each other. The hotter the
temperature, the better the sales.

Multivariate

Multivariate data involves three or more variables, it is categorized

under multivariate. It is similar to a bivariate, but contains more than
one dependent variable.

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Example: data for house price prediction

No. of rooms Floors Area (sq ft) Price

2 0 900 $4000,00

3 2 1,100 $600,000

3.5 5 1,500 $900,000

4 3 2,100 $1,200,000

The patterns can be studied by drawing conclusions using mean,

median, and mode, dispersion or range, minimum, maximum, etc. You
can start describing the data and using it to guess what the price of
the house will be.

7) What are the feature selection methods used to select the

right variables?

There are two main methods for feature selection:

Filter Methods
This involves:

Linear discrimination analysis

ANOVA
Chi-Square
The best analogy for selecting features is “bad data in, bad answer
out.” When we're limiting or selecting the features, it's all about
cleaning up the data coming in.

Wrapper Methods
This involves:
Forward Selection: We test one feature at a time and keep adding
them until we get a good fit
Backward Selection: We test all the features and start removing them
to see what works better
Recursive Feature Elimination: Recursively looks through all the
different features and how they pair together
Wrapper methods are very labor-intensive, and high-end computers

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are needed if a lot of data analysis is performed with the wrapper

method.

8) In your choice of language, write a program that prints the

numbers ranging from one to 50.

But for multiples of three, print “Fizz” instead of the number and for
the multiples of five, print “Buzz.” For numbers which are multiples of
both three and five, print “FizzBuzz”

The code is shown below:

Note that the range mentioned is 51, which means zero to 50.
However, the range asked in the question is one to 50. Therefore, in
the above code, you can include the range as (1,51).

The output of the above code is as shown:

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9) You are given a data set consisting of variables with more

than 30 percent missing values. How will you deal with
them?

The following are ways to handle missing data values:

If the data set is large, we can just simply remove the rows with
missing data values. It is the quickest way; we use the rest of the data
to predict the values.

For smaller data sets, we can substitute missing values with the mean
or average of the rest of the data using pandas dataframe in python.
There are different ways to do so, such as df.mean(), df.fillna(mean).

10) For the given points, how will you calculate the Euclidean
distance in Python?

plot1 = [1,3]

plot2 = [2,5]

The Euclidean distance can be calculated as follows:

euclidean_distance = sqrt( (plot1[0]-plot2[0])**2 + (plot1[1]-

plot2[1])**2 )

11) What is dimensionality reduction and its benefits?

Dimensionality reduction refers to the process of converting a data

set with vast dimensions into data with fewer dimensions (fields) to
convey similar information concisely.

This reduction helps in compressing data and reducing storage space.

It also reduces computation time as fewer dimensions lead to less
computing. It removes redundant features; for example, there's no
point in storing a value in two different units (meters and inches).

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 Interview Guide

12) How will you calculate eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the

following 3x3 matrix?

-2 -4 2

-2 1 2

4 2 5

The characteristic equation is as shown:

Expanding determinant:

(-2 – λ) [(1-λ) (5-λ)-2x2] + 4[(-2) x (5-λ) -4x2] + 2[(-2) x 2-4(1-λ)] =0

- λ3 + 4λ2 + 27λ – 90 = 0,
λ3 - 4 λ2 -27 λ + 90 = 0
Here we have an algebraic equation built from the eigenvectors.
By hit and trial:
33 – 4 x 32 - 27 x 3 +90 = 0
Hence, (λ - 3) is a factor:
λ3 - 4 λ2 - 27 λ +90 = (λ – 3) (λ2 – λ – 30)
Eigenvalues are 3,-5,6:
(λ – 3) (λ2 – λ – 30) = (λ – 3) (λ+5) (λ-6),
Calculate eigenvector for λ = 3
For X = 1,
-5 - 4Y + 2Z =0,
-2 - 2Y + 2Z =0
Subtracting the two equations:
3 + 2Y = 0,
Subtracting back into second equation:
Y = -(3/2)
Z = -(1/2)
Similarly, we can calculate the eigenvectors for -5 and 6.

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 Interview Guide

13) How should you maintain a deployed model?

The steps to maintain a deployed model are:

Monitor
Constant monitoring of all models is needed to determine their
performance accuracy. When you change something, you want to
figure out how your changes are going to affect things. This needs to
be monitored to ensure it's doing what it's supposed to do.

Evaluate
Evaluation metrics of the current model is calculated to determine if a
new algorithm is needed.

Compare
The new models are compared to each other to determine which
model performs the best.

Rebuild
The best performing model is re-built on the current state of data.

14) What are recommender systems?

A recommender system predicts what a user would rate a specific

product based on their preferences. It can be split into two different
areas:

Collaborative filtering
As an example, Last.fm recommends tracks that other users with
similar interests play often. This is also commonly seen on Amazon
after making a purchase; customers may notice the following message
accompanied by product recommendations: “Users who bought this
also bought…”

Content-based filtering
As an example: Pandora uses the properties of a song to recommend
music with similar properties. Here, we look at content, instead of
looking at who else is listening to music.

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 Interview Guide

15) How do you find RMSE and MSE in a linear regression

model?

RMSE and MSE are two of the most common measures of accuracy
for a linear regression model.

RMSE indicates the Root Mean Square Error.

MSE indicates the Mean Square Error.

16) How can you select k for k-means?

We use the elbow method to select k for k-means clustering. The

idea of the elbow method is to run k-means clustering on the data set
where ‘k’ is the number of clusters.

Within the sum of squares (WSS), it is defined as the sum of the

squared distance between each member of the cluster and its
centroid.

17) What is the significance of p-value?

p-value typically ≤ 0.05

This indicates strong evidence against the null hypothesis; so you
reject the null hypothesis.

p-value typically > 0.05

This indicates weak evidence against the null hypothesis, so you
accept the null hypothesis.

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p-value at cutoff 0.05

This is considered to be marginal, meaning it could go either way.

18) How can outlier values be treated?

You can drop outliers only if it is a garbage value.

Example: height of an adult = abc ft. This cannot be true, as the height
cannot be a string value. In this case, outliers can be removed.

If the outliers have extreme values, they can be removed. For example,
if all the data points are clustered between zero to 10, but one point
lies at 100, then we can remove this point.

If you cannot drop outliers, you can try the following:

Try a different model. Data detected as outliers by linear models can

be fit by nonlinear models. Therefore, be sure you are choosing the
correct model.
Try normalizing the data. This way, the extreme data points are pulled
to a similar range.
You can use algorithms that are less affected by outliers; an example
would be random forests.

19) How can a time-series data be declared as stationary?

It is stationary when the variance and mean of the series are constant
with time.

Here is a visual example:

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In the first graph, the variance is constant with time. Here, X is the time
factor and Y is the variable. The value of Y goes through the same
points all the time; in other words, it is stationary.

In the second graph, the waves get bigger, which means it is non-
stationary and the variance is changing with time.

20) How can you calculate accuracy using a confusion matrix?

Consider this confusion matrix:

You can see the values for total data, actual values, and predicted
values.

Total=650 actual
P n
P 262 15 False Negative
Predicted
N 26 347 True Positive

True Positive

False Negative

The formula for accuracy is:

Accuracy = (True Positive + True Negative) / Total Observations
= (262 + 347) / 650
= 609 / 650
= 0.93
As a result, we get an accuracy of 93 percent.

21) Write the equation and calculate the precision and recall
rate.

Consider the same confusion matrix used in the previous question.

Total=650 actual
P n
P 262 15 False Negative
Predicted
N 26 347 True Positive

True Positive

False Negative

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Precision = (True positive) / (True Positive + False Positive)

= 262 / 277
= 0.94
Recall Rate = (True Positive) / (Total Positive + False Negative)
= 262 / 288
= 0.90

22) ‘People who bought this also bought…’ recommendations

seen on Amazon are a result of which algorithm?

The recommendation engine is accomplished with collaborative

filtering. Collaborative filtering explains the behavior of other users
and their purchase history in terms of ratings, selection, etc.

The engine makes predictions on what might interest a person based

on the preferences of other users. In this algorithm, item features are
unknown.

For example, a sales page shows that a certain number of people

buy a new phone and also buy tempered glass at the same time.
Next time, when a person buys a phone, he or she may see a
recommendation to buy tempered glass as well.

23) Write a basic SQL query that lists all orders with
customer information.

Usually, we have order tables and customer tables that contain the
following columns:
Order Table

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Orderid
customerId
OrderNumber
TotalAmount
Customer Table
Id
FirstName
LastName
City
Country
The SQL query is:
SELECT OrderNumber, TotalAmount, FirstName,
LastName, City, Country
FROM Order
JOIN Customer
ON Order.CustomerId = Customer.Id

24) You are given a dataset on cancer detection. You have

built a classification model and achieved an accuracy of
96 percent. Why shouldn't you be happy with your model
performance? What can you do about it?

Cancer detection results in imbalanced data. In an imbalanced dataset,

accuracy should not be based as a measure of performance. It is
important to focus on the remaining four percent, which represents
the patients who were wrongly diagnosed. Early diagnosis is crucial
when it comes to cancer detection, and can greatly improve a patient’s
prognosis.

Hence, to evaluate model performance, we should use Sensitivity

(True Positive Rate), Specificity (True Negative Rate), F measure to
determine the class wise performance of the classifier.

25) Which of the following machine learning algorithms can be

used for inputting missing values of both categorical and
continuous variables?

K-means clustering

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Linear regression

K-NN (k-nearest neighbor)

Decision trees

The K nearest neighbor algorithm can be used because it can

compute the nearest neighbor and if it doesn't have a value, it just
computes the nearest neighbor based on all the other features.

When you're dealing with K-means clustering or linear regression,

you need to do that in your pre-processing, otherwise, they'll crash.
Decision trees also have the same problem, although there is some
variance.

26) Below are the eight actual values of target variable in the
train file. What is the entropy of the target variable?

[0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1]
Choose the correct answer.
1. -(5/8 log(5/8) + 3/8 log(3/8))
2. 5/8 log(5/8) + 3/8 log(3/8)
3. 3/8 log(5/8) + 5/8 log(3/8)
4. 5/8 log(3/8) – 3/8 log(5/8)
The target variable, in this case, is 1.
The formula for calculating the entropy is:
Putting p=5 and n=8, we get
Entropy = A = -(5/8 log(5/8) + 3/8 log(3/8))

27) We want to predict the probability of death from heart

disease based on three risk factors: age, gender, and blood
cholesterol level. What is the most appropriate algorithm
for this case?

Choose the correct option:

1. Logistic Regression

2. Linear Regression

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3. K-means clustering
4. Apriori algorithm
The most appropriate algorithm for this case is A, logistic regression.

28) After studying the behavior of a population, you have

identified four specific individual types that are valuable
to your study. You would like to find all users who are most
similar to each individual type. Which algorithm is most
appropriate for this study?

Choose the correct option:

1. K-means clustering

2. Linear regression

3. Association rules
4. Decision trees
As we are looking for grouping people together specifically by four
different similarities, it indicates the value of k. Therefore, K-means
clustering (answer A) is the most appropriate algorithm for this study.

29) You have run the association rules algorithm on your

dataset, and the two rules {banana, apple} => {grape} and
{apple, orange} => {grape} have been found to be relevant.
What else must be true?

Choose the right answer:

1. {banana, apple, grape, orange} must be a frequent itemset

2. {banana, apple} => {orange} must be a relevant rule

3. {grape} => {banana, apple} must be a relevant rule

4. {grape, apple} must be a frequent itemset

The answer is A: {grape, apple} must be a frequent itemset

30) Your organization has a website where visitors randomly

receive one of two coupons. It is also possible that visitors
to the website will not receive a coupon. You have been

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asked to determine if offering a coupon to website visitors

has any impact on their purchase decisions. Which analysis
method should you use?

1. One-way ANOVA

2. K-means clustering

3. Association rules

4. Student’s t-test
The answer is A: One-way ANOVA

Additional Questions on Basic Data Science Concepts

31. What are feature vectors?

A feature vector is an n-dimensional vector of numerical features that

represent an object. In machine learning, feature vectors are used to
represent numeric or symbolic characteristics (called features) of an
object in a mathematical way that’s easy to analyze.

32. What are the steps in making a decision tree?

1. Take the entire data set as input.

2. Look for a split that maximizes the separation of the classes.
A split is any test that divides the data into two sets.
3. Apply the split to the input data (divide step).
4. Re-apply steps one and two to the divided data.
5. Stop when you meet any stopping criteria.
6. This step is called pruning. Clean up the tree if you went too far
doing splits.

33. What is root cause analysis?

Root cause analysis was initially developed to analyze industrial

accidents but is now widely used in other areas. It is a problem-solving

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technique used for isolating the root causes of faults or problems. A

factor is called a root cause if its deduction from the problem-fault-
sequence averts the final undesirable event from recurring.

34. What is logistic regression?

Logistic regression is also known as the logit model. It is a technique

used to forecast the binary outcome from a linear combination of
predictor variables.

35. What are recommender systems?

Recommender systems are a subclass of information filtering systems

that are meant to predict the preferences or ratings that a user would
give to a product.

36. Explain cross-validation.

Cross validation is a model validation technique for evaluating how

the outcomes of a statistical analysis will generalize to an independent
data set. It is mainly used in backgrounds where the objective is
to forecast and one wants to estimate how accurately a model will
accomplish in practice.

The goal of cross-validation is to term a data set to test the model

in the training phase (i.e. validation data set) to limit problems like
overfitting and gain insight into how the model will generalize to an
independent data set.

37. What is collaborative filtering?

Most recommender systems use this filtering process to find patterns

and information by collaborating perspectives, numerous data sources,
and several agents.

38. Do gradient descent methods always converge to similar

points?

They do not, because in some cases, they reach a local minima or a

local optima point. You would not reach the global optima point. This
is governed by the data and the starting conditions.

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39. What is the goal of A/B Testing?

This is statistical hypothesis testing for randomized experiments with

two variables, A and B. The objective of A/B testing is to detect any
changes to a web page to maximize or increase the outcome of a
strategy.

40. What are the drawbacks of the linear model?

The assumption of linearity of the errors

It can’t be used for count outcomes or binary outcomes
There are overfitting problems that it can’t solve

41. What is the law of large numbers?

It is a theorem that describes the result of performing the same

experiment very frequently. This theorem forms the basis of
frequency-style thinking. It states that the sample mean, sample
variance and sample standard deviation converge to what they are
trying to estimate.

42. What are the confounding variables?

These are extraneous variables in a statistical model that correlates

directly or inversely with both the dependent and the independent
variable. The estimate fails to account for the confounding factor.

43. What is star schema?

It is a traditional database schema with a central table. Satellite tables

map IDs to physical names or descriptions and can be connected to
the central fact table using the ID fields; these tables are known as
lookup tables and are principally useful in real-time applications, as
they save a lot of memory. Sometimes, star schemas involve several
layers of summarization to recover information faster.

44. How regularly must an algorithm be updated?

You will want to update an algorithm when:

You want the model to evolve as data streams through infrastructure

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The underlying data source is changing

There is a case of non-stationarity

45. What are eigenvalue and eigenvector?

Eigenvalues are the directions along which a particular linear

transformation acts by flipping, compressing, or stretching.

Eigenvectors are for understanding linear transformations. In data

analysis, we usually calculate the eigenvectors for a correlation or
covariance matrix.

46. Why is resampling done?

Resampling is done in any of these cases:

Estimating the accuracy of sample statistics by using subsets of

accessible data, or drawing randomly with replacement from a set of
data points

Substituting labels on data points when performing significance tests

Validating models by using random subsets (bootstrapping, cross-

validation)

47. What is selection bias?

Selection bias, in general, is a problematic situation in which error is

introduced due to a non-random population sample.

48. What are the types of biases that can occur during sampling?

Selection bias

Undercoverage bias

Survivorship bias

49. What is survivorship bias?

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Survivorship bias is the logical error of focusing aspects that

support surviving a process and casually overlooking those that
did not because of their lack of prominence. This can lead to wrong
conclusions in numerous ways.

50. How do you work towards a random forest?

The underlying principle of this technique is that several weak learners

combine to provide a strong learner. The steps involved are:

Build several decision trees on bootstrapped training samples of data

On each tree, each time a split is considered, a random sample of mm

predictors is chosen as split candidates out of all pp predictors

Rule of thumb: At each split m=p√m=p

Predictions: At the majority rule

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