In this Data Science Interview Questions blog, I will introduce you to the most frequently asked questions on Data Science, Analytics and Machine Learning interviews. This blog is the perfect guide for you to learn all the concepts required to clear a Data Science interview.
Data science, also known as a data-driven decision, is an interdisciplinary field about scientific methods, processes and systems to extract knowledge from data in various forms and make decisions based on this knowledge. There are a lot of things that a data scientist should know, I will give you a list of data science interview questions that I faced during several interviews, if you are an aspiring data scientist then you can start from here, if you have been for a while in this field then it might be repetition for you, but you will get a lot of things from here. I will try to start from very basic interview questions and cover advanced ones later, So let’s get started.
The following are the topics covered in our interview questions:
The answer lies in the difference between explaining and predicting.
Supervised Machine learning:
Supervised machine learning requires training labelled data. Let’s discuss it in a bit detail when we have
Unsupervised Machine learning:
Unsupervised machine learning doesn’t require labelled data.
Selection bias is a kind of error that occurs when the researcher decides who is going to be studied. It is usually associated with research where the selection of participants isn’t random. It is sometimes referred to as the selection effect. It is the distortion of statistical analysis, resulting from the method of collecting samples. If the selection bias is not taken into account, then some conclusions of the study may not be accurate.
The types of selection bias include:
Bias: Bias is an error introduced in your model due to oversimplification of the machine learning algorithm. It can lead to underfitting. When you train your model at that time model makes simplified assumptions to make the target function easier to understand.
Low bias machine learning algorithms — Decision Trees, k-NN and SVM High bias machine learning algorithms — Linear Regression, Logistic Regression
Variance: Variance is error introduced in your model due to complex machine learning algorithm, your model learns noise also from the training data set and performs badly on test data set. It can lead to high sensitivity and overfitting.
Normally, as you increase the complexity of your model, you will see a reduction in error due to lower bias in the model. However, this only happens until a particular point. As you continue to make your model more complex, you end up over-fitting your model and hence your model will start suffering from high variance.
Bias-Variance trade-off: The goal of any supervised machine learning algorithm is to have low bias and low variance to achieve good prediction performance.
There is no escaping the relationship between bias and variance in machine learning. Increasing the bias will decrease the variance. Increasing the variance will decrease bias.
5. What is exploding gradients ?
Gradient is the direction and magnitude calculated during training of a neural network that is used to update the network weights in the right direction and by the right amount.
“Exploding gradients are a problem where large error gradients accumulate and result in very large updates to neural network model weights during training.” At an extreme, the values of weights can become so large as to overflow and result in NaN values.
This has the effect of your model being unstable and unable to learn from your training data. Now let’s understand what is the gradient.
6. What is a confusion matrix ?
A data set used for performance evaluation is called test data set. It should contain the correct labels and predicted labels.
The predicted labels will exactly the same if the performance of a binary classifier is perfect.
The predicted labels usually match with part of the observed labels in real world scenarios.
A binary classifier predicts all data instances of a test dataset as either positive or negative. This produces four outcomes-
Basic measures derived from the confusion matrix
However, there are chances that data is distributed around a central value without any bias to the left or right and reaches normal distribution in the form of a bell-shaped curve.
Figure: Normal distribution in a bell curve
The random variables are distributed in the form of a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve.
Properties of Normal Distribution are as follows;
Correlation: Correlation is considered or described as the best technique for measuring and also for estimating the quantitative relationship between two variables. Correlation measures how strongly two variables are related.
Covariance: In covariance two items vary together and it’s a measure that indicates the extent to which two random variables change in cycle. It is a statistical term; it explains the systematic relation between a pair of random variables, wherein changes in one variable are reciprocal by a corresponding change in another variable.
9. What Are Confounding Variables?
In statistics, a confounder is a variable that influences both the dependent variable and independent variable.
For example, if you are researching whether a lack of exercise leads to weight gain,
lack of exercise = independent variable
weight gain = dependent variable.
A confounding variable here would be any other variable that affects both of these variables, such as the age of the subject.
11. What is Survivorship Bias?
It is the logical error of focusing aspects that support surviving some process and casually overlooking those that did not work because of their lack of prominence. This can lead to wrong conclusions in numerous different means.
12. What is selection Bias?
Selection bias occurs when the sample obtained is not representative of the population intended to be analysed.
13. Explain how a ROC curve works ?
The ROC curve is a graphical representation of the contrast between true positive rates and false positive rates at various thresholds. It is often used as a proxy for the trade-off between the sensitivity(true positive rate) and false positive rate.
We can reword the above as P(A) = 0.6 and P(B) = 0.8. Furthermore, let’s assume that these are independent events, meaning that the probability of one event is not impacted by the other. We can then use the formula…
P(A or B) = P(A) + P(B) — P(A and B)
P(A or B) = 0.6 + 0.8 — (0.6*0.8)
P(A or B) = 0.92
This can be answered using the Bayes Theorem. The extended equation for the Bayes Theorem is the following:
Assume that the probability of picking the unfair coin is denoted as P(A) and the probability of flipping 10 heads in a row is denoted as P(B). Then P(B|A) is equal to 1, P(B∣¬A) is equal to 0.⁵¹⁰, and P(¬A) is equal to 0.99.
If you fill in the equation, then P(A|B) = 0.9118 or 91.18%.
Point Estimation gives us a particular value as an estimate of a population parameter. Method of Moments and Maximum Likelihood estimator methods are used to derive Point Estimators for population parameters.
A confidence interval gives us a range of values which is likely to contain the population parameter. The confidence interval is generally preferred, as it tells us how likely this interval is to contain the population parameter. This likeliness or probability is called Confidence Level or Confidence coefficient and represented by 1 — alpha, where alpha is the level of significance.
It is a hypothesis testing for a randomized experiment with two variables A and B.
The goal of A/B Testing is to identify any changes to the web page to maximize or increase the outcome of interest. A/B testing is a fantastic method for figuring out the best online promotional and marketing strategies for your business. It can be used to test everything from website copy to sales emails to search ads
An example of this could be identifying the click-through rate for a banner ad.
When you perform a hypothesis test in statistics, a p-value can help you determine the strength of your results. p-value is a number between 0 and 1. Based on the value it will denote the strength of the results. The claim which is on trial is called the Null Hypothesis.
Low p-value (≤ 0.05) indicates strength against the null hypothesis which means we can reject the null Hypothesis. High p-value (≥ 0.05) indicates strength for the null hypothesis which means we can accept the null Hypothesis p-value of 0.05 indicates the Hypothesis could go either way. To put it in another way,
High P values: your data are likely with a true null. Low P values: your data are unlikely with a true null.
A convex function is one where a line drawn between any two points on the graph lies on or above the graph. It has one minimum.
A non-convex function is one where a line drawn between any two points on the graph may intersect other points on the graph. It characterized as “wavy”.
When a cost function is non-convex, it means that there’s a likelihood that the function may find local minima instead of the global minimum, which is typically undesired in machine learning models from an optimization perspective.
For this, I’m going to look at the eight rules of probability laid out here and the four different counting methods (see more here).
Eight rules of probability
Counting Methods
Factorial Formula: n! = n x (n -1) x (n — 2) x … x 2 x 1
Use when the number of items is equal to the number of places available.
Eg. Find the total number of ways 5 people can sit in 5 empty seats.
= 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 120
Fundamental Counting Principle (multiplication)
This method should be used when repetitions are allowed and the number of ways to fill an open place is not affected by previous fills.
Eg. There are 3 types of breakfasts, 4 types of lunches, and 5 types of desserts. The total number of combinations is = 5 x 4 x 3 = 60
Permutations: P(n,r)= n! / (n−r)!
This method is used when replacements are not allowed and order of item ranking matters.
Eg. A code has 4 digits in a particular order and the digits range from 0 to 9. How many permutations are there if one digit can only be used once?
P(n,r) = 10!/(10–4)! = (10x9x8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1)/(6x5x4x3x2x1) = 5040
Combinations Formula: C(n,r)=(n!)/[(n−r)!r!]
This is used when replacements are not allowed and the order in which items are ranked does not mater.
Eg. To win the lottery, you must select the 5 correct numbers in any order from 1 to 52. What is the number of possible combinations?
C(n,r) = 52! / (52–5)!5! = 2,598,960
Brilliant provides a great definition of Markov chains (here):
“A Markov chain is a mathematical system that experiences transitions from one state to another according to certain probabilistic rules. The defining characteristic of a Markov chain is that no matter how the process arrived at its present state, the possible future states are fixed. In other words, the probability of transitioning to any particular state is dependent solely on the current state and time elapsed.”
The actual math behind Markov chains requires knowledge on linear algebra and matrices, so I’ll leave some links below in case you want to explore this topic further on your own.
Sensitivity is commonly used to validate the accuracy of a classifier (Logistic, SVM, Random Forest etc.).
Sensitivity is nothing but “Predicted True events/ Total events”. True events here are the events which were true and model also predicted them as true.
Calculation of seasonality is pretty straightforward.
Seasonality = ( True Positives ) / ( Positives in Actual Dependent Variable )
Resampling is done in any of these cases:
In statistics and machine learning, one of the most common tasks is to fit a model to a set of training data, so as to be able to make reliable predictions on general untrained data.
In overfitting, a statistical model describes random error or noise instead of the underlying relationship. Overfitting occurs when a model is excessively complex, such as having too many parameters relative to the number of observations. A model that has been overfitted, has poor predictive performance, as it overreacts to minor fluctuations in the training data.
Underfitting occurs when a statistical model or machine learning algorithm cannot capture the underlying trend of the data. Underfitting would occur, for example, when fitting a linear model to non-linear data. Such a model too would have poor predictive performance.
To combat overfitting and underfitting, you can resample the data to estimate the model accuracy (k-fold cross-validation) and by having a validation dataset to evaluate the model.
Regularisation is the process of adding tuning parameter to a model to induce smoothness in order to prevent overfitting. This is most often done by adding a constant multiple to an existing weight vector. This constant is often the L1(Lasso) or L2(ridge). The model predictions should then minimize the loss function calculated on the regularized training set.
It is a theorem that describes the result of performing the same experiment a large number of times. This theorem forms the basis of frequency-style thinking. It says that the sample means, the sample variance and the sample standard deviation converge to what they are trying to estimate.
Mean imputation is the practice of replacing null values in a data set with the mean of the data.
Mean imputation is generally bad practice because it doesn’t take into account feature correlation. For example, imagine we have a table showing age and fitness score and imagine that an eighty-year-old has a missing fitness score. If we took the average fitness score from an age range of 15 to 80, then the eighty-year-old will appear to have a much higher fitness score that he actually should.
There are many steps that can be taken when data wrangling and data cleaning. Some of the most common steps are listed below:
There are a number of ways to handle unbalanced binary classification (assuming that you want to identify the minority class):
Boxplot vs Histogram
While boxplots and histograms are visualizations used to show the distribution of the data, they communicate information differently.
Histograms are bar charts that show the frequency of a numerical variable’s values and are used to approximate the probability distribution of the given variable. It allows you to quickly understand the shape of the distribution, the variation, and potential outliers.
Boxplots communicate different aspects of the distribution of data. While you can’t see the shape of the distribution through a box plot, you can gather other information like the quartiles, the range, and outliers. Boxplots are especially useful when you want to compare multiple charts at the same time because they take up less space than histograms.
Both L1 and L2 regularization are methods used to reduce the overfitting of training data. Least Squares minimizes the sum of the squared residuals, which can result in low bias but high variance.
L2 Regularization, also called ridge regression, minimizes the sum of the squared residuals plus lambda times the slope squared. This additional term is called the Ridge Regression Penalty. This increases the bias of the model, making the fit worse on the training data, but also decreases the variance.
If you take the ridge regression penalty and replace it with the absolute value of the slope, then you get Lasso regression or L1 regularization.
L2 is less robust but has a stable solution and always one solution. L1 is more robust but has an unstable solution and can possibly have multiple solutions.
StatQuest has an amazing video on Lasso and Ridge regression here.
A neural network is a multi-layered model inspired by the human brain. Like the neurons in our brain, the circles above represent a node. The blue circles represent the input layer, the black circles represent the hidden layers, and the green circles represent the output layer. Each node in the hidden layers represents a function that the inputs go through, ultimately leading to an output in the green circles. The formal term for these functions is called the sigmoid activation function.
If you want a step by step example of creating a neural network, check out Victor Zhou’s article here.
If you’re a visual/audio learner, 3Blue1Brown has an amazing series on neural networks and deep learning on YouTube here.
Cross-validation is essentially a technique used to assess how well a model performs on a new independent dataset. The simplest example of cross-validation is when you split your data into two groups: training data and testing data, where you use the training data to build the model and the testing data to test the model.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all metric. The metric(s) chosen to evaluate a machine learning model depends on various factors:
There are a number of metrics that can be used, including adjusted r-squared, MAE, MSE, accuracy, recall, precision, f1 score, and the list goes on.
Check out questions related to modeling metrics on Interview Query
Recall attempts to answer “What proportion of actual positives was identified correctly?”
Precision attempts to answer “What proportion of positive identifications was actually correct?”
Taken from Wikipedia
A false positive is an incorrect identification of the presence of a condition when it’s absent.
A false negative is an incorrect identification of the absence of a condition when it’s actually present.
An example of when false negatives are more important than false positives is when screening for cancer. It’s much worse to say that someone doesn’t have cancer when they do, instead of saying that someone does and later realizing that they don’t.
This is a subjective argument, but false positives can be worse than false negatives from a psychological point of view. For example, a false positive for winning the lottery could be a worse outcome than a false negative because people normally don’t expect to win the lottery anyways.
NLP stands for Natural Language Processing. It is a branch of artificial intelligence that gives machines the ability to read and understand human languages.
There are a couple of reasons why a random forest is a better choice of model than a support vector machine:
Dimensionality reduction is the process of reducing the number of features in a dataset. This is important mainly in the case when you want to reduce variance in your model (overfitting).
Wikipedia states four advantages of dimensionality reduction (see here):
In its simplest sense, PCA involves project higher dimensional data (eg. 3 dimensions) to a smaller space (eg. 2 dimensions). This results in a lower dimension of data, (2 dimensions instead of 3 dimensions) while keeping all original variables in the model.
PCA is commonly used for compression purposes, to reduce required memory and to speed up the algorithm, as well as for visualization purposes, making it easier to summarize data.
One major drawback of Naive Bayes is that it holds a strong assumption in that the features are assumed to be uncorrelated with one another, which typically is never the case.
One way to improve such an algorithm that uses Naive Bayes is by decorrelating the features so that the assumption holds true.
There are a couple of drawbacks of a linear model:
Another way of asking this question is “Is a random forest a better model than a decision tree?” And the answer is yes because a random forest is an ensemble method that takes many weak decision trees to make a strong learner. Random forests are more accurate, more robust, and less prone to overfitting.
Mean Squared Error (MSE) gives a relatively high weight to large errors — therefore, MSE tends to put too much emphasis on large deviations. A more robust alternative is MAE (mean absolute deviation).
The assumptions are as follows:
Extreme violations of these assumptions will make the results redundant. Small violations of these assumptions will result in a greater bias or variance of the estimate.
Multicollinearity exists when an independent variable is highly correlated with another independent variable in a multiple regression equation. This can be problematic because it undermines the statistical significance of an independent variable.
You could use the Variance Inflation Factors (VIF) to determine if there is any multicollinearity between independent variables — a standard benchmark is that if the VIF is greater than 5 then multicollinearity exists.
There are a couple of metrics that you can use:
R-squared/Adjusted R-squared: Relative measure of fit. This was explained in a previous answer
F1 Score: Evaluates the null hypothesis that all regression coefficients are equal to zero vs the alternative hypothesis that at least one doesn’t equal zero
RMSE: Absolute measure of fit.
Decision trees are a popular model, used in operations research, strategic planning, and machine learning. Each square above is called a node, and the more nodes you have, the more accurate your decision tree will be (generally). The last nodes of the decision tree, where a decision is made, are called the leaves of the tree. Decision trees are intuitive and easy to build but fall short when it comes to accuracy.
Random forests are an ensemble learning technique that builds off of decision trees. Random forests involve creating multiple decision trees using bootstrapped datasets of the original data and randomly selecting a subset of variables at each step of the decision tree. The model then selects the mode of all of the predictions of each decision tree. By relying on a “majority wins” model, it reduces the risk of error from an individual tree.
For example, if we created one decision tree, the third one, it would predict 0. But if we relied on the mode of all 4 decision trees, the predicted value would be 1. This is the power of random forests.
Random forests offer several other benefits including strong performance, can model non-linear boundaries, no cross-validation needed, and gives feature importance.
A kernel is a way of computing the dot product of two vectors 𝐱x and 𝐲y in some (possibly very high dimensional) feature space, which is why kernel functions are sometimes called “generalized dot product” [2]
The kernel trick is a method of using a linear classifier to solve a non-linear problem by transforming linearly inseparable data to linearly separable ones in a higher dimension.
When the number of features is greater than the number of observations, then performing dimensionality reduction will generally improve the SVM.
Overfitting is an error where the model ‘fits’ the data too well, resulting in a model with high variance and low bias. As a consequence, an overfit model will inaccurately predict new data points even though it has a high accuracy on the training data.
Boosting is an ensemble method to improve a model by reducing its bias and variance, ultimately converting weak learners to strong learners. The general idea is to train a weak learner and sequentially iterate and improve the model by learning from the previous learner. You can learn more about it here.
Deep Learning is nothing but a paradigm of machine learning which has shown incredible promise in recent years. This is because of the fact that Deep Learning shows a great analogy with the functioning of the human brain.
Machine learning is a field of computer science that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning can be categorised in the following three categories.
Deep Learning is a subfield of machine learning concerned with algorithms inspired by the structure and function of the brain called artificial neural networks.
Now although Deep Learning has been around for many years, the major breakthroughs from these techniques came just in recent years. This is because of two main reasons:
GPUs are multiple times faster and they help us build bigger and deeper deep learning models in comparatively less time than we required previously.
Reinforcement Learning is learning what to do and how to map situations to actions. The end result is to maximise the numerical reward signal. The learner is not told which action to take but instead must discover which action will yield the maximum reward. Reinforcement learning is inspired by the learning of human beings, it is based on the reward/penalty mechanism.
Artificial Neural networks are a specific set of algorithms that have revolutionized machine learning. They are inspired by biological neural networks. Neural Networks can adapt to changing the input so the network generates the best possible result without needing to redesign the output criteria.
Artificial Neural Networks works on the same principle as a biological Neural Network. It consists of inputs which get processed with weighted sums and Bias, with the help of Activation Functions.
There are two methods here: we can either initialize the weights to zero or assign them randomly.
Initializing all weights to 0: This makes your model similar to a linear model. All the neurons and every layer perform the same operation, giving the same output and making the deep net useless.
Initializing all weights randomly: Here, the weights are assigned randomly by initializing them very close to 0. It gives better accuracy to the model since every neuron performs different computations. This is the most commonly used method.
Also referred to as “loss” or “error,” cost function is a measure to evaluate how good your model’s performance is. It’s used to compute the error of the output layer during backpropagation. We push that error backwards through the neural network and use that during the different training functions.
With neural networks, you’re usually working with hyperparameters once the data is formatted correctly. A hyperparameter is a parameter whose value is set before the learning process begins. It determines how a network is trained and the structure of the network (such as the number of hidden units, the learning rate, epochs, etc.).
When your learning rate is too low, training of the model will progress very slowly as we are making minimal updates to the weights. It will take many updates before reaching the minimum point.
If the learning rate is set too high, this causes undesirable divergent behaviour to the loss function due to drastic updates in weights. It may fail to converge (model can give a good output) or even diverge (data is too chaotic for the network to train).
There are four layers in CNN:
Pooling is used to reduce the spatial dimensions of a CNN. It performs down-sampling operations to reduce the dimensionality and creates a pooled feature map by sliding a filter matrix over the input matrix.
RNNs are a type of artificial neural networks designed to recognise the pattern from the sequence of data such as Time series, stock market and government agencies etc. To understand recurrent nets, first, you have to understand the basics of feedforward nets.
Both these networks RNN and feed-forward named after the way they channel information through a series of mathematical orations performed at the nodes of the network. One feeds information through straight(never touching the same node twice), while the other cycles it through a loop, and the latter are called recurrent.
Recurrent networks, on the other hand, take as their input, not just the current input example they see, but also the what they have perceived previously in time.
The decision a recurrent neural network reached at time t-1 affects the decision that it will reach one moment later at time t. So recurrent networks have two sources of input, the present and the recent past, which combine to determine how they respond to new data, much as we do in life.
The error they generate will return via backpropagation and be used to adjust their weights until error can’t go any lower. Remember, the purpose of recurrent nets is to accurately classify sequential input. We rely on the backpropagation of error and gradient descent to do so.
Long-Short-Term Memory (LSTM) is a special kind of recurrent neural network capable of learning long-term dependencies, remembering information for long periods as its default behaviour. There are three steps in an LSTM network:
As in Neural Networks, MLPs have an input layer, a hidden layer, and an output layer. It has the same structure as a single layer perceptron with one or more hidden layers. A single layer perceptron can classify only linear separable classes with binary output (0,1), but MLP can classify nonlinear classes.
Except for the input layer, each node in the other layers uses a nonlinear activation function. This means the input layers, the data coming in, and the activation function is based upon all nodes and weights being added together, producing the output. MLP uses a supervised learning method called “backpropagation.” In backpropagation, the neural network calculates the error with the help of cost function. It propagates this error backward from where it came (adjusts the weights to train the model more accurately).
To Understand Gradient Descent, Let’s understand what is a Gradient first.
A gradient measures how much the output of a function changes if you change the inputs a little bit. It simply measures the change in all weights with regard to the change in error. You can also think of a gradient as the slope of a function.
Gradient Descent can be thought of climbing down to the bottom of a valley, instead of climbing up a hill. This is because it is a minimization algorithm that minimizes a given function (Activation Function).
While training an RNN, your slope can become either too small; this makes the training difficult. When the slope is too small, the problem is known as a Vanishing Gradient. It leads to long training times, poor performance, and low accuracy.
Backpropagation is a training algorithm used for multilayer neural network. In this method, we move the error from an end of the network to all weights inside the network and thus allowing efficient computation of the gradient.
It has the following steps:
The Activation function is used to introduce non-linearity into the neural network helping it to learn more complex function. Without which the neural network would be only able to learn linear function which is a linear combination of its input data. An activation function is a function in an artificial neuron that delivers an output based on inputs.
Purpose |
Libraries |
Scientific Computation |
Numpy |
Tabular Data |
Pandas |
Data Modelling & Preprocessing |
Scikit Learn |
Time-Series Analysis |
Statsmodels |
Text processing |
Regular Expressions, NLTK |
Deep Learning |
Tensorflow, Pytorch |
Auto-encoders are simple learning networks that aim to transform inputs into outputs with the minimum possible error. This means that we want the output to be as close to input as possible. We add a couple of layers between the input and the output, and the sizes of these layers are smaller than the input layer. The auto-encoder receives unlabelled input which is then encoded to reconstruct the input.
Boltzmann machines have a simple learning algorithm that allows them to discover interesting features that represent complex regularities in the training data. The Boltzmann machine is basically used to optimise the weights and the quantity for the given problem. The learning algorithm is very slow in networks with many layers of feature detectors. “Restricted Boltzmann Machines” algorithm has a single layer of feature detectors which makes it faster than the rest.
Dropout is a technique of dropping out hidden and visible units of a network randomly to prevent overfitting of data (typically dropping 20 per cent of the nodes). It doubles the number of iterations needed to converge the network.
Batch normalization is the technique to improve the performance and stability of neural networks by normalizing the inputs in every layer so that they have mean output activation of zero and standard deviation of one.
Batch Gradient Descent |
Stochastic Gradient Descent |
The batch gradient computes the gradient using the entire dataset. |
The stochastic gradient computes the gradient using a single sample. |
It takes time to converge because the volume of data is huge, and weights update slowly. |
It converges much faster than the batch gradient because it updates weight more frequently. |
Tensorflow provides both C++ and Python APIs, making it easier to work on and has a faster compilation time compared to other Deep Learning libraries like Keras and Torch. Tensorflow supports both CPU and GPU computing devices.
A tensor is a mathematical object represented as arrays of higher dimensions. These arrays of data with different dimensions and ranks fed as input to the neural network are called “Tensors.”
Everything in a tensorflow is based on creating a computational graph. It has a network of nodes where each node operates, Nodes represent mathematical operations, and edges represent tensors. Since data flows in the form of a graph, it is also called a “DataFlow Graph.”
Suppose there is a wine shop purchasing wine from dealers, which they resell later. But some dealers sell fake wine. In this case, the shop owner should be able to distinguish between fake and authentic wine.
The forger will try different techniques to sell fake wine and make sure specific techniques go past the shop owner’s check. The shop owner would probably get some feedback from wine experts that some of the wine is not original. The owner would have to improve how he determines whether a wine is fake or authentic.
The forger’s goal is to create wines that are indistinguishable from the authentic ones while the shop owner intends to tell if the wine is real or not accurately
Let us understand this example with the help of an image.
There is a noise vector coming into the forger who is generating fake wine.
Here the forger acts as a Generator.
The shop owner acts as a Discriminator.
The Discriminator gets two inputs; one is the fake wine, while the other is the real authentic wine. The shop owner has to figure out whether it is real or fake.
So, there are two primary components of Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) named:
The generator is a CNN that keeps keys producing images and is closer in appearance to the real images while the discriminator tries to determine the difference between real and fake images The ultimate aim is to make the discriminator learn to identify real and fake images.
Apart from the very technical questions, your interviewer could even hit you up with a few simple ones to check your overall confidence, in the likes of the following.
The following are some of the important skills to possess which will come handy when performing data analysis using Python.
The following will help to tackle any problem in data analytics and machine learning.
Dependent variable for a regression analysis might not satisfy one or more assumptions of an ordinary least squares regression. The residuals could either curve as the prediction increases or follow skewed distribution. In such scenarios, it is necessary to transform the response variable so that the data meets the required assumptions. A Box cox transformation is a statistical technique to transform non-normal dependent variables into a normal shape. If the given data is not normal then most of the statistical techniques assume normality. Applying a box cox transformation means that you can run a broader number of tests.
A Box Cox transformation is a way to transform non-normal dependent variables into a normal shape. Normality is an important assumption for many statistical techniques, if your data isn’t normal, applying a Box-Cox means that you are able to run a broader number of tests. The Box Cox transformation is named after statisticians George Box and Sir David Roxbee Cox who collaborated on a 1964 paper and developed the technique.
A false positive is an incorrect identification of the presence of a condition when it’s absent.
A false negative is an incorrect identification of the absence of a condition when it’s actually present.
An example of when false negatives are more important than false positives is when screening for cancer. It’s much worse to say that someone doesn’t have cancer when they do, instead of saying that someone does and later realizing that they don’t.
This is a subjective argument, but false positives can be worse than false negatives from a psychological point of view. For example, a false positive for winning the lottery could be a worse outcome than a false negative because people normally don’t expect to win the lottery anyways.
Another way of asking this question is “Is a random forest a better model than a decision tree?” And the answer is yes because a random forest is an ensemble method that takes many weak decision trees to make a strong learner. Random forests are more accurate, more robust, and less prone to overfitting.
Multicollinearity exists when an independent variable is highly correlated with another independent variable in a multiple regression equation. This can be problematic because it undermines the statistical significance of an independent variable.
You could use the Variance Inflation Factors (VIF) to determine if there is any multicollinearity between independent variables — a standard benchmark is that if the VIF is greater than 5 then multicollinearity exists.
There are a couple of metrics that you can use:
R-squared/Adjusted R-squared: Relative measure of fit. This was explained in a previous answer
F1 Score: Evaluates the null hypothesis that all regression coefficients are equal to zero vs the alternative hypothesis that at least one doesn’t equal zero
RMSE: Absolute measure of fit.
The extent of the missing values is identified after identifying the variables with missing values. If any patterns are identified the analyst has to concentrate on them as it could lead to interesting and meaningful business insights.
If there are no patterns identified, then the missing values can be substituted with mean or median values (imputation) or they can simply be ignored. Assigning a default value which can be mean, minimum or maximum value. Getting into the data is important.
If it is a categorical variable, the default value is assigned. The missing value is assigned a default value. If you have a distribution of data coming, for normal distribution give the mean value.
If 80% of the values for a variable are missing then you can answer that you would be dropping the variable instead of treating the missing values.
Root cause analysis: a method of problem-solving used for identifying the root cause(s) of a problem [5]
Correlation measures the relationship between two variables, range from -1 to 1. Causation is when a first event appears to have caused a second event. Causation essentially looks at direct relationships while correlation can look at both direct and indirect relationships.
Example: a higher crime rate is associated with higher sales in ice cream in Canada, aka they are positively correlated. However, this doesn’t mean that one causes another. Instead, it’s because both occur more when it’s warmer outside.
You can test for causation using hypothesis testing or A/B testing.
When there are a number of outliers that positively or negatively skew the data.
There are 4 combinations of rolling a 4 (1+3, 3+1, 2+2):
P(rolling a 4) = 3/36 = 1/12
There are combinations of rolling an 8 (2+6, 6+2, 3+5, 5+3, 4+4):
P(rolling an 8) = 5/36
Formula for margin of error
You can use the margin of error (ME) formula to determine the desired sample size.
Since we looking at the number of events (# of infections) occurring within a given timeframe, this is a Poisson distribution question.
The probability of observing k events in an interval
Null (H0): 1 infection per person-days
Alternative (H1): >1 infection per person-days
k (actual) = 10 infections
lambda (theoretical) = (1/100)*1787
p = 0.032372 or 3.2372% calculated using .poisson() in excel or ppois in R
Since p-value < alpha (assuming 5% level of significance), we reject the null and conclude that the hospital is below the standard.
Use the General Binomial Probability formula to answer this question:
General Binomial Probability Formula
p = 0.8
n = 5
k = 3,4,5
P(3 or more heads) = P(3 heads) + P(4 heads) + P(5 heads) = 0.94 or 94%
Using Excel…
p =1-norm.dist(1200, 1020, 50, true)
p= 0.000159
x = 3
mean = 2.5*4 = 10
using Excel…
p = poisson.dist(3,10,true)
p = 0.010336
Equation for Precision (PV)
Precision = Positive Predictive Value = PV
PV = (0.001*0.997)/[(0.001*0.997)+((1–0.001)*(1–0.985))]
PV = 0.0624 or 6.24%
See more about this equation here.
Confidence interval formula
p-hat = 60/100 = 0.6
z* = 1.96
n = 100
This gives us a confidence interval of [50.4,69.6]. Therefore, given a confidence interval of 95%, if you are okay with the worst scenario of tying then you can relax. Otherwise, you cannot relax until you got 61 out of 100 to claim yes.
Therefore the confidence interval = 100 +/- 19.6 = [964.8, 1435.2]
Using the General Addition Rule in probability:
P(mother or father) = P(mother) + P(father) — P(mother and father)
P(mother) = P(mother or father) + P(mother and father) — P(father)
P(mother) = 0.17 + 0.06–0.12
P(mother) = 0.11
Since 70 is one standard deviation below the mean, take the area of the Gaussian distribution to the left of one standard deviation.
= 2.3 + 13.6 = 15.9%
Confidence interval for sample
Given a confidence level of 95% and degrees of freedom equal to 8, the t-score = 2.306
Confidence interval = 1100 +/- 2.306*(30/3)
Confidence interval = [1076.94, 1123.06]
Upper bound = mean + t-score*(standard deviation/sqrt(sample size))
0 = -2 + 2.306*(s/3)
2 = 2.306 * s / 3
s = 2.601903
Therefore the standard deviation would have to be at least approximately 2.60 for the upper bound of the 95% T confidence interval to touch 0.
See here for full tutorial on finding the Confidence Interval for Two Independent Samples.
Confidence Interval = mean +/- t-score * standard error (see above)
mean = new mean — old mean = 3–5 = -2
t-score = 2.101 given df=18 (20–2) and confidence interval of 95%
standard error = sqrt((0.⁶²*9+0.⁶⁸²*9)/(10+10–2)) * sqrt(1/10+1/10)
standard error = 0.352
confidence interval = [-2.75, -1.25]
This exhaustive list is sure to strengthen your preparation for data science interview questions.
For data scientists, the work isn’t easy, but it’s rewarding and there are plenty of available positions out there. These data science interview questions can help you get one step closer to your dream job. So, prepare yourself for the rigors of interviewing and stay sharp with the nuts and bolts of data science.
I hope this set of Data Science Interview Questions and Answers will help you in preparing for your interviews. All the best!
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