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Data Scientist Interviews

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Data Scientist Interview Questions

In a data scientist interview, expect employers to ask questions that assess your data modeling, problem-solving, and programming skills. Be prepared to answer general questions that test your knowledge of statistics and data science. You should also be ready to answer open-ended questions that test your creativity, communication skills, and formal education in data modeling and programming.

Top Data Scientist Interview Questions & How to Answer

Question 1

Question #1: Which data modeling techniques do you prefer and why?

How to answer
How to answer: Turning data into understandable and actionable information is a critical part of the data scientist's job. This question allows employers to understand your data modeling skills and background. List and discuss your preferred data modeling techniques, including benefits such as ease of use, flexibility, etc.
Question 2

Question #2: How would you detect bogus Instagram accounts used for scamming consumers?

How to answer
How to answer: Questions like this one allow an employer to test your problem-solving skills. When answering open-ended questions such as these, feel free to ask clarifying questions and use whiteboards to demonstrate your coding and diagramming skills. Share your thought process as you work through the problem.
Question 3

Question #3: Describe circumstances that require a list, tuple, or set in Python.

How to answer
How to answer: Interviewers will use questions such as this one to test your Python programming skills. Review Python basics such as lists, tuples, and sets before your interview. You should be able to explain when and how each tool is used by data scientists.

54,342 data scientist interview questions shared by candidates

background and some details of take-home some questions are very vague, and really not sure what he want... many questions are open ended for me, bc the take-home is not well-designed from my perspective ... it would be better to ask questions related to statistics or machine learning directly... they don't use any fancy ml techniques, but emphasis the statistics
avatar

Data Scientist

Interviewed at Stitch Fix

3.3★
Mar 31, 2020

background and some details of take-home some questions are very vague, and really not sure what he want... many questions are open ended for me, bc the take-home is not well-designed from my perspective ... it would be better to ask questions related to statistics or machine learning directly... they don't use any fancy ml techniques, but emphasis the statistics

1 coding question : Write a function for sampling from a multimodal distribution. Your inputs are: Keys (i.e. green, red, blue) Weights (i.e. 2, 3, 5.5) N (number of samples drawn from this distribution ( i.e. n=5) Output : list of n keys: Example n = 5: [blue, blue, blue, red, green] Hint: draw a rv of uniform distribution. Calculate the normalized weights for each key. - Machine Learning question : we have a list of items and how many times each item is purchased (range from 10 to 100000 times). For each user the probability of user buying each item is uniform (same across all users). Let’s say we have an item "A" that has been recommended 10 times, has been purchased 10 times. What is the long term probability of being purchased for this item ?
avatar

Data Scientist

Interviewed at Stitch Fix

3.3★
Jul 31, 2020

1 coding question : Write a function for sampling from a multimodal distribution. Your inputs are: Keys (i.e. green, red, blue) Weights (i.e. 2, 3, 5.5) N (number of samples drawn from this distribution ( i.e. n=5) Output : list of n keys: Example n = 5: [blue, blue, blue, red, green] Hint: draw a rv of uniform distribution. Calculate the normalized weights for each key. - Machine Learning question : we have a list of items and how many times each item is purchased (range from 10 to 100000 times). For each user the probability of user buying each item is uniform (same across all users). Let’s say we have an item "A" that has been recommended 10 times, has been purchased 10 times. What is the long term probability of being purchased for this item ?

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