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Data Problem Solving and Business Context Questions

Practical data oriented problem solving that connects business questions to correct, robust analyses. Includes translating business questions into queries and metric definitions, designing SQL or query logic for edge cases, handling data quality issues such as nulls duplicates and inconsistent dates, validating assumptions, and producing metrics like retention and churn. Emphasizes building queries and pipelines that are resilient to real world data issues, thinking through measurement definitions, and linking data findings to business implications and possible next steps.

HardTechnical
31 practiced
Explain how to compute churn using survival analysis (Kaplan-Meier estimator) versus naive churn rate. Provide SQL or pseudocode to compute Kaplan-Meier on user activity data, explain how to handle censored observations (users with limited follow-up), and give an example interpretation where survival analysis offers deeper insight.
EasyTechnical
25 practiced
You find 10% of rows in the payments table have null revenue_amount. As the BI analyst owning monthly revenue reporting, outline a step-by-step investigation plan and SQL checks you would run to determine root cause. For each potential root cause propose a treatment in reporting (treat as zero, exclude, impute, or backfill) and explain the business implications of each choice.
HardSystem Design
21 practiced
For a fact table of 5B rows across 3 years where queries commonly filter by date range and user_id, propose a partitioning and clustering strategy for Snowflake, BigQuery, or Redshift. Discuss trade-offs for query performance, storage cost, write latency, compaction, and handling of late-arriving data and updates.
MediumTechnical
28 practiced
Write SQL to compute 90-day LTV for install cohorts defined by install_date. Use payments(user_id, amount, paid_at) and installs(user_id, install_date). LTV is average revenue per user in the cohort within 90 days of install. Handle users with multiple payments and exclude test/internal accounts if given a flag.
HardSystem Design
25 practiced
Design an anomaly detection pipeline for key business metrics that handles seasonality and weekday effects, allows detection at global/product/region levels, provides explainability for alerts, and maintains low false positive rates. Describe statistical methods (e.g., EWMA, STL decomposition, control charts), data pipeline components, latency, and how to validate and tune thresholds.

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