DS 面试考察基本内容

1. QL (SQL 编程是面试 Data Analyst 岗位的必考环节)

2. Machine Learning
从拿面试的角度来说，简历上一定要有 1–2 个跟 Machine Learning 相关的 project！
还有一点很重要：一定要对写在简历上的项目非常熟！

3. Python
Python 编程也是面试必考环节。面试时主要考察你如何用 Python 处理数据、建模、把数据可视
化….

4. A/B Testing

5. Product Sense
对于 Product Sense（产品思维）的考察，面试官通常会穿插在 Case Study 环节中。

6. 基础的统计知识
统计知识是数据分析的基础。面试前，要把常见的统计知识如概念概率、分布、线性回归、时间序
列…都掌握好
 7. 算法知识
这一块内容在 Data Analyst 面试时相对于 Data Scientist 来说考的概率较小，但也有一些公司会进
行考察。通常，难度系数较高的面试，其入职后的工作内容也会大概率地更有技术含量。

当然，要找一份好工作，功夫还在平时。我们还为大家整理出了一份关于 DS 面试的书单，不仅能帮助做职
业规划，还能提高大家的职业技能！

面试相关书籍

1， R for Data Science

Author: Garrett grolemund & Hadley wickham

阅读书籍链接：R for Data Science

推荐理由：

本书通过简单直观的 R 代码、逐渐深入的讲解以及省时省力的方法，提供了大量数据分析样例，终帮助你
高效地解决各类数据问题。1 章介绍了如何创建 R 函数，避免不必要的代码重复。你会学到如何借助 R 程
序包在各种数据源上准备、处理和执行复杂的 ETL 操作。后面的章节介绍了财务数据的时间序列分析，同
时还介绍了机器学习的几个热点，例如数据分类、回归、聚类、关联规则挖掘、降维等。本书的结尾中，
你会学到如何解决实际问题，并能够在数据分析过程中轻松地给出解决方案。

2, Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-
Analytic Thinking
Author: O’Reilly Media
阅读书籍链接：data science for business: what you need to know about data mining and
data-analytic thinking

推荐理由：
本书清晰易懂，适合统计基础一般的人用来先理解 ML 的概念，书中涵盖大量数据科学的概念，读起来通
俗易懂。你可以把书中大框架都理解了再去看别的更偏重理论或算法的书

3, 编程之法：面试和算法心得
Author: July

阅读书籍链接：编程之法 面试和算法心得
推荐理由：
· 蜕变于 CSDN 技术博客 “结构之法算法之道”
· 内容涉及面试、算法、机器学习三大主题
· 作者数年的积累成果
· 进入 IT 行业求职笔试和面试宝典

本书涉及面试、算法、机器学习三个主题。书中的每道编程题目都给出了多种思路、多种解法，不断优
化、逐层递进。第 1 章至第 6 章分别阐述字符串、数组、树、查找、动态规划、海量数据处理等相关的编
程面试题和算法，第 7 章介绍机器学习的两个算法—K 近邻和 SVM。

此外，每一章都有“举一反三”和“习题”，以便读者及时运用所学的方法解决相似的问题，且在附录中收录了
语言、链表、概率等其他题型。书中的每一道题都是面试的高频题目，反复出现在近 5 年各大公司的笔试
和面试中，对面试备考有着极强的参考价值。

面试视频材料：

【数据科学面试】你不得不会的 Data Science 经典面试题

Data Science Interview 丨如何善用两大 Distribution 族群，解答 Metrics 类数据科学面试问题

面试经验分享：

数据科学 DS 面试准备经验总结

面试真题：

BASIC DATA SCIENCE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Q1. What is Data Science? List the differences between supervised and unsupervised
learning.
Data Science is a blend of various tools, algorithms, and machine learning principles with
the goal to discover hidden patterns from the raw data. How is this different from what
statisticians have been doing for years?

The answer lies in the difference between explaining and predicting.

The differences between supervised and unsupervised learning are as follows;

Supervised Learning Unsupervised Learning

Input data is labelled. Input data is unlabelled.
Uses a training data set. Uses the input data set.
Used for prediction. Used for analysis.
Enables classification and Enables Classification, Density Estimation, & Dimension
regression. Reduction

Q2. What is Selection Bias?

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:

 1. Sampling bias: It is a systematic error due to a non-random sample of a population
causing some members of the population to be less likely to be included than
others resulting in a biased sample.
2. Time interval: A trial may be terminated early at an extreme value (often for ethical
reasons), but the extreme value is likely to be reached by the variable with the
largest variance, even if all variables have a similar mean.
3. Data: When specific subsets of data are chosen to support a conclusion or rejection
of bad data on arbitrary grounds, instead of according to previously stated or
generally agreed criteria.
4. Attrition: Attrition bias is a kind of selection bias caused by attrition (loss of
participants) discounting trial subjects/tests that did not run to completion.

Q3. What is bias-variance trade-off?

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.

1. The k-nearest neighbour algorithm has low bias and high variance, but the trade-
off can be changed by increasing the value of k which increases the number of
neighbours that contribute to the prediction and in turn increases the bias of the
model.
2. The support vector machine algorithm has low bias and high variance, but the
trade-off can be changed by increasing the C parameter that influences the
number of violations of the margin allowed in the training data which increases the
bias but decreases the variance.

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.

Q4. What is a confusion matrix?

The confusion matrix is a 2X2 table that contains 4 outputs provided by the binary
classifier. Various measures, such as error-rate, accuracy, specificity, sensitivity, precision
and recall are derived from it. Confusion Matrix
A data set used for performance evaluation is called a 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 data set as either positive or negative.
This produces four outcomes-

1. True-positive(TP) — Correct positive prediction

2. False-positive(FP) — Incorrect positive prediction
3. True-negative(TN) — Correct negative prediction
4. False-negative(FN) — Incorrect negative prediction

Basic measures derived from the confusion matrix

1. Error Rate = (FP+FN)/(P+N)

2. Accuracy = (TP+TN)/(P+N)
3. Sensitivity(Recall or True positive rate) = TP/P
4. Specificity(True negative rate) = TN/N
5. Precision(Positive predicted value) = TP/(TP+FP)
6. F-Score(Harmonic mean of precision and recall) = (1+b)(PREC.REC)/(b²PREC+REC)
where b is commonly 0.5, 1, 2.
STATISTICS INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Q5. What is the difference between “long” and “wide” format data?
In the wide-format, a subject’s repeated responses will be in a single row, and each
response is in a separate column. In the long-format, each row is a one-time point per
subject. You can recognize data in wide format by the fact that columns generally
represent groups.

Q6. What do you understand by the term Normal Distribution?

Data is usually distributed in different ways with a bias to the left or to the right or it can
all be jumbled up.

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;

1. Unimodal -one mode

2. Symmetrical -left and right halves are mirror images
3. Bell-shaped -maximum height (mode) at the mean
4. Mean, Mode, and Median are all located in the center
5. Asymptotic

Q7. What is correlation and covariance in statistics?

Covariance and Correlation are two mathematical concepts; these two approaches are
widely used in statistics. Both Correlation and Covariance establish the relationship and
also measure the dependency between two random variables. Though the work is similar
between these two in mathematical terms, they are different from each other.

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 reciprocal by a corresponding change in another variable.

Q8. What is the difference between Point Estimates and Confidence Interval?
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.

Q9. What is the goal of A/B Testing?

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.

Q10. What is p-value?

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.
Q11. In any 15-minute interval, there is a 20% probability that you will see at least
one shooting star. What is the probability that you see at least one shooting star in
the period of an hour?

Probability of not seeing any shooting star in 15 minutes is

= 1 – P( Seeing one shooting star )

= 1 – 0.2 = 0.8

Probability of not seeing any shooting star in the period of one hour

= (0.8) ^ 4 = 0.4096

Probability of seeing at least one shooting star in the one hour

= 1 – P( Not seeing any star )

= 1 – 0.4096 = 0.5904

Q12. How can you generate a random number between 1 – 7 with only a die?

• Any die has six sides from 1-6. There is no way to get seven equal outcomes from
a single rolling of a die. If we roll the die twice and consider the event of two rolls,
we now have 36 different outcomes.
• To get our 7 equal outcomes we have to reduce this 36 to a number divisible by 7.
We can thus consider only 35 outcomes and exclude the other one.
• A simple scenario can be to exclude the combination (6,6), i.e., to roll the die again
if 6 appears twice.
• All the remaining combinations from (1,1) till (6,5) can be divided into 7 parts of 5
each. This way all the seven sets of outcomes are equally likely.

Q13. A certain couple tells you that they have two children, at least one of which is
a girl. What is the probability that they have two girls?

In the case of two children, there are 4 equally likely possibilities

BB, BG, GB and GG;

where B = Boy and G = Girl and the first letter denotes the first child.

From the question, we can exclude the first case of BB. Thus from the remaining 3
possibilities of BG, GB & BB, we have to find the probability of the case with two girls.
Thus, P(Having two girls given one girl) = 1/3

Q14. A jar has 1000 coins, of which 999 are fair and 1 is double headed. Pick a coin
at random, and toss it 10 times. Given that you see 10 heads, what is the probability
that the next toss of that coin is also a head?

There are two ways of choosing the coin. One is to pick a fair coin and the other is to pick
the one with two heads.

Probability of selecting fair coin = 999/1000 = 0.999

Probability of selecting unfair coin = 1/1000 = 0.001

Selecting 10 heads in a row = Selecting fair coin * Getting 10 heads + Selecting an unfair
coin

P (A) = 0.999 * (1/2)^5 = 0.999 * (1/1024) = 0.000976

P (B) = 0.001 * 1 = 0.001
P( A / A + B ) = 0.000976 / (0.000976 + 0.001) = 0.4939
P( B / A + B ) = 0.001 / 0.001976 = 0.5061

Probability of selecting another head = P(A/A+B) * 0.5 + P(B/A+B) * 1 = 0.4939 * 0.5 +

0.5061 = 0.7531

Q15. What do you understand by statistical power of sensitivity and how do you
calculate it?

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 )

Q16. Why Is Re-sampling 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)

Q17. What are the differences between over-fitting and under-fitting?

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.

Q18. How to combat Overfitting and Underfitting?

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.

Q19. What is regularisation? Why is it useful?

Data Science Masters Program
Explore Curriculum

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.

Q20. What Is the Law of Large Numbers?

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.

Q21. 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.

Q22. What Are the Types of Biases That Can Occur During Sampling?
 • Selection bias
• Under coverage bias
• Survivorship bias

Q23. 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.

Q24. What is selection Bias?

Selection bias occurs when the sample obtained is not representative of the population
intended to be analysed.

Q25. 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.
Q26. What is TF/IDF vectorization?

TF–IDF is short for term frequency-inverse document frequency, is a numerical statistic

that is intended to reflect how important a word is to a document in a collection or corpus.
It is often used as a weighting factor in information retrieval and text mining.

The TF–IDF value increases proportionally to the number of times a word appears in the
document but is offset by the frequency of the word in the corpus, which helps to adjust
for the fact that some words appear more frequently in general.

Q27. Why we generally use Softmax non-linearity function as last operation in-
network?
It is because it takes in a vector of real numbers and returns a probability distribution. Its
definition is as follows. Let x be a vector of real numbers (positive, negative, whatever,
there are no constraints).

Then the i’th component of Softmax(x) is —

It should be clear that the output is a probability distribution: each element is non-
negative and the sum over all components is 1.

DATA ANALYSIS INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Q28. Python or R – Which one would you prefer for text analytics?

We will prefer Python because of the following reasons:

• Python would be the best option because it has Pandas library that provides easy
to use data structures and high-performance data analysis tools.
• R is more suitable for machine learning than just text analysis.
• Python performs faster for all types of text analytics.

Q29. How does data cleaning plays a vital role in the analysis?

Data cleaning can help in analysis because:

• Cleaning data from multiple sources helps to transform it into a format that data
analysts or data scientists can work with.
• Data Cleaning helps to increase the accuracy of the model in machine learning.
 • It is a cumbersome process because as the number of data sources increases, the
time taken to clean the data increases exponentially due to the number of sources
and the volume of data generated by these sources.
• It might take up to 80% of the time for just cleaning data making it a critical part
of the analysis task.

Q30. Differentiate between univariate, bivariate and multivariate analysis.

Univariate analyses are descriptive statistical analysis techniques which can be

differentiated based on the number of variables involved at a given point of time. For
example, the pie charts of sales based on territory involve only one variable and can the
analysis can be referred to as univariate analysis.

The bivariate analysis attempts to understand the difference between two variables at a
time as in a scatterplot. For example, analyzing the volume of sale and spending can be
considered as an example of bivariate analysis.

Multivariate analysis deals with the study of more than two variables to understand the
effect of variables on the responses.

Q31. Explain 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.

Q32. What is Cluster Sampling?

Cluster sampling is a technique used when it becomes difficult to study the target
population spread across a wide area and simple random sampling cannot be
applied. Cluster Sample is a probability sample where each sampling unit is a collection
or cluster of elements.

For eg., A researcher wants to survey the academic performance of high school students
in Japan. He can divide the entire population of Japan into different clusters (cities). Then
the researcher selects a number of clusters depending on his research through simple or
systematic random sampling.
Let’s continue our Data Science Interview Questions blog with some more statistics
questions.

Q33. What is Systematic Sampling?

Systematic sampling is a statistical technique where elements are selected from an

ordered sampling frame. In systematic sampling, the list is progressed in a circular manner
so once you reach the end of the list, it is progressed from the top again. The best example
of systematic sampling is equal probability method.

Q34. What are Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues?

Eigenvectors are used for understanding linear transformations. In data analysis, we

usually calculate the eigenvectors for a correlation or covariance matrix. Eigenvectors are
the directions along which a particular linear transformation acts by flipping, compressing
or stretching.

Eigenvalue can be referred to as the strength of the transformation in the direction of

eigenvector or the factor by which the compression occurs.

Q35. Can you cite some examples where a false positive is important than a false
negative?

Let us first understand what false positives and false negatives are.

• False Positives are the cases where you wrongly classified a non-event as an event
a.k.a Type I error.
• False Negatives are the cases where you wrongly classify events as non-events,
a.k.a Type II error.

Example 1: In the medical field, assume you have to give chemotherapy to patients.
Assume a patient comes to that hospital and he is tested positive for cancer, based on
the lab prediction but he actually doesn’t have cancer. This is a case of false positive. Here
it is of utmost danger to start chemotherapy on this patient when he actually does not
have cancer. In the absence of cancerous cell, chemotherapy will do certain damage to
his normal healthy cells and might lead to severe diseases, even cancer.

Example 2: Let’s say an e-commerce company decided to give $1000 Gift voucher to the
customers whom they assume to purchase at least $10,000 worth of items. They send free
voucher mail directly to 100 customers without any minimum purchase condition because
they assume to make at least 20% profit on sold items above $10,000. Now the issue is if
we send the $1000 gift vouchers to customers who have not actually purchased anything
but are marked as having made $10,000 worth of purchase.

Q36. Can you cite some examples where a false negative important than a false
positive?

Example 1: Assume there is an airport ‘A’ which has received high-security threats and
based on certain characteristics they identify whether a particular passenger can be a
threat or not. Due to a shortage of staff, they decide to scan passengers being predicted
as risk positives by their predictive model. What will happen if a true threat customer is
being flagged as non-threat by airport model?

Example 2: What if Jury or judge decides to make a criminal go free?

Example 3: What if you rejected to marry a very good person based on your predictive
model and you happen to meet him/her after a few years and realize that you had a false
negative?

Q37. Can you cite some examples where both false positive and false negatives are
equally important?

In the Banking industry giving loans is the primary source of making money but at the
same time if your repayment rate is not good you will not make any profit, rather you will
risk huge losses.

Banks don’t want to lose good customers and at the same point in time, they don’t want
to acquire bad customers. In this scenario, both the false positives and false negatives
become very important to measure.

Q38. Can you explain the difference between a Validation Set and a Test Set?

A Validation set can be considered as a part of the training set as it is used for parameter
selection and to avoid overfitting of the model being built.

On the other hand, a Test Set is used for testing or evaluating the performance of a
trained machine learning model.

In simple terms, the differences can be summarized as; training set is to fit the parameters
i.e. weights and test set is to assess the performance of the model i.e. evaluating the
predictive power and generalization.

Q39. Explain cross-validation.

Cross-validation is a model validation technique for evaluating how the outcomes of
statistical analysis will generalize to an independent dataset. Mainly used in
backgrounds where the objective is 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) in order to limit problems like overfitting and get an insight on
how the model will generalize to an independent data set.

MACHINE LEARNING INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Q40. What is Machine Learning?

Machine Learning explores the study and construction of algorithms that can learn from
and make predictions on data. Closely related to computational statistics. Used to devise
complex models and algorithms that lend themselves to a prediction which in commercial
use is known as predictive analytics. Given below, is an image representing the various
domains Machine Learning lends itself to.

Q41. What is Supervised Learning?

Supervised learning is the machine learning task of inferring a function from labeled
training data. The training data consist of a set of training examples.

Algorithms: Support Vector Machines, Regression, Naive Bayes, Decision Trees, K-nearest
Neighbor Algorithm and Neural Networks

E.g. If you built a fruit classifier, the labels will be “this is an orange, this is an apple and this
is a banana”, based on showing the classifier examples of apples, oranges and bananas.
Q42. What is Unsupervised learning?
Unsupervised learning is a type of machine learning algorithm used to draw inferences
from datasets consisting of input data without labelled responses.

Algorithms: Clustering, Anomaly Detection, Neural Networks and Latent Variable Models

E.g. In the same example, a fruit clustering will categorize as “fruits with soft skin and lots
of dimples”, “fruits with shiny hard skin” and “elongated yellow fruits”.

Q43. What are the various classification algorithms?

The diagram lists the most important classification algorithms.

Q44. What is ‘Naive’ in a Naive Bayes?

The Naive Bayes Algorithm is based on the Bayes Theorem. Bayes’ theorem describes
the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of conditions that might be related
to the event.

The Algorithm is ‘naive’ because it makes assumptions that may or may not turn out to
be correct.

Q45. Explain SVM algorithm in detail.

SVM stands for support vector machine, it is a supervised machine learning algorithm
which can be used for both Regression and Classification. If you have n features in your
training data set, SVM tries to plot it in n-dimensional space with the value of each feature
being the value of a particular coordinate. SVM uses hyperplanes to separate out different
classes based on the provided kernel function.
Q46. What are the support vectors in SVM?

In the diagram, we see that the thinner lines mark the distance from the classifier to the
closest data points called the support vectors (darkened data points). The distance
between the two thin lines is called the margin.

Q47. What are the different kernels in SVM?

There are four types of kernels in SVM.
 1. Linear Kernel
2. Polynomial kernel
3. Radial basis kernel
4. Sigmoid kernel

Q48. Explain Decision Tree algorithm in detail.

A decision tree is a supervised machine learning algorithm mainly used for Regression
and Classification. It breaks down a data set into smaller and smaller subsets while at the
same time an associated decision tree is incrementally developed. The final result is a tree
with decision nodes and leaf nodes. A decision tree can handle both categorical and
numerical data.

Q49. What are Entropy and Information gain in Decision tree algorithm?
The core algorithm for building a decision tree is
called ID3. ID3 uses Entropy and Information Gain to construct a decision tree.

Entropy

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A decision tree is built top-down from a root node and involve partitioning of data into
homogenious subsets. ID3 uses enteropy to check the homogeneity of a sample. If the
sample is completely homogenious then entropy is zero and if the sample is an equally
divided it has entropy of one.
Information Gain

The Information Gain is based on the decrease in entropy after a dataset is split on an
attribute. Constructing a decision tree is all about finding attributes that return the highest
information gain.
Q50. What is pruning in Decision Tree?
Pruning is a technique in machine learning and search algorithms that reduces the size
of decision trees by removing sections of the tree that provide little power to classify
instances. So, when we remove sub-nodes of a decision node, this process is
called pruning or opposite process of splitting.

Q51. What is logistic regression? State an example when you have used logistic regression
recently.
Logistic Regression often referred to as the logit model is a technique to predict the
binary outcome from a linear combination of predictor variables.

For example, if you want to predict whether a particular political leader will win the
election or not. In this case, the outcome of prediction is binary i.e. 0 or 1 (Win/Lose). The
predictor variables here would be the amount of money spent for election campaigning
of a particular candidate, the amount of time spent in campaigning, etc.

Q52. What is Linear Regression?

Linear regression is a statistical technique where the score of a variable Y is predicted
from the score of a second variable X. X is referred to as the predictor variable and Y as
the criterion variable.
Q53. What Are the Drawbacks of the Linear Model?
Some drawbacks of the linear model are:

• 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

Q54. What is the difference between Regression and classification ML techniques?

Both Regression and classification machine learning techniques come under Supervised
machine learning algorithms. In Supervised machine learning algorithm, we have to
train the model using labelled data set, While training we have to explicitly provide the
correct labels and algorithm tries to learn the pattern from input to output. If our labels
are discrete values then it will a classification problem, e.g A,B etc. but if our labels are
continuous values then it will be a regression problem, e.g 1.23, 1.333 etc.

Q55. 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. Recommender
systems are widely used in movies, news, research articles, products, social tags, music,
etc.
Examples include movie recommenders in IMDB, Netflix & BookMyShow, product
recommenders in e-commerce sites like Amazon, eBay & Flipkart, YouTube video
recommendations and game recommendations in Xbox.

Q56. What is Collaborative filtering?

The process of filtering used by most of the recommender systems to find patterns or
information by collaborating viewpoints, various data sources and multiple agents.

An example of collaborative filtering can be to predict the rating of a particular user based
on his/her ratings for other movies and others’ ratings for all movies. This concept is
widely used in recommending movies in IMDB, Netflix & BookMyShow, product
recommenders in e-commerce sites like Amazon, eBay & Flipkart, YouTube video
recommendations and game recommendations in Xbox.

Q57. How can outlier values be treated?

Outlier values can be identified by using univariate or any other graphical analysis
method. If the number of outlier values is few then they can be assessed individually but
for a large number of outliers, the values can be substituted with either the 99th or the
1st percentile values.

All extreme values are not outlier values. The most common ways to treat outlier values

1. To change the value and bring it within a range.

2. To just remove the value.

Q58. What are the various steps involved in an analytics project?

The following are the various steps involved in an analytics project:

1. Understand the Business problem

2. Explore the data and become familiar with it.
3. Prepare the data for modelling by detecting outliers, treating missing values,
transforming variables, etc.
4. After data preparation, start running the model, analyze the result and tweak the
approach. This is an iterative step until the best possible outcome is achieved.
 5. Validate the model using a new data set.
6. Start implementing the model and track the result to analyze the performance of
the model over the period of time.

Q59. During analysis, how do you treat missing values?

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.

Q60. How will you define the number of clusters in a clustering algorithm?
Though the Clustering Algorithm is not specified, this question is mostly in reference to K-
Means clustering where “K” defines the number of clusters. The objective of clustering is
to group similar entities in a way that the entities within a group are similar to each other
but the groups are different from each other.

For example, the following image shows three different groups.

Within Sum of squares is generally used to explain the homogeneity within a cluster. If
you plot WSS for a range of number of clusters, you will get the plot shown below.
 • The Graph is generally known as Elbow Curve.
• Red circled a point in above graph i.e. Number of Cluster =6 is the point after
which you don’t see any decrement in WSS.
• This point is known as the bending point and taken as K in K – Means.

This is the widely used approach but few data scientists also use Hierarchical clustering
first to create dendrograms and identify the distinct groups from there.

Q61. What is Ensemble Learning?

Ensemble Learning is basically combining a diverse set of learners(Individual models)
together to improvise on the stability and predictive power of the model.

Q62. Describe in brief any type of Ensemble Learning?

Ensemble learning has many types but two more popular ensemble learning techniques
are mentioned below.

Bagging

Bagging tries to implement similar learners on small sample populations and then takes
a mean of all the predictions. In generalised bagging, you can use different learners on
different population. As you expect this helps us to reduce the variance error.
Boosting

Boosting is an iterative technique which adjusts the weight of an observation based on

the last classification. If an observation was classified incorrectly, it tries to increase the
weight of this observation and vice versa. Boosting in general decreases the bias error
and builds strong predictive models. However, they may over fit on the training data.

Q63. What is a Random Forest? How does it work?

Random forest is a versatile machine learning method capable of performing both
regression and classification tasks. It is also used for dimensionality reduction, treats
missing values, outlier values. It is a type of ensemble learning method, where a group
of weak models combine to form a powerful model.

In Random Forest, we grow multiple

trees as opposed to a single tree. To classify a new object based on attributes, each tree
gives a classification. The forest chooses the classification having the most votes(Overall
the trees in the forest) and in case of regression, it takes the average of outputs by
different trees.

Q64. How Do You Work Towards a Random Forest?

The underlying principle of this technique is that several weak learners combined to
provide a keen 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

Q65. What cross-validation technique would you use on a time series data set?
Instead of using k-fold cross-validation, you should be aware of the fact that a time
series is not randomly distributed data — It is inherently ordered by chronological order.

In case of time series data, you should use techniques like forward=chaining — Where
you will be model on past data then look at forward-facing data.

fold 1: training[1], test[2]

fold 1: training[1 2], test[3]

fold 1: training[1 2 3], test[4]

fold 1: training[1 2 3 4], test[5]

Q66. What is a Box-Cox Transformation?

The 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 the 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.
Q67. 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

• The underlying data source is changing
• There is a case of non-stationarity
• The algorithm underperforms/ results lack accuracy

Q68. If you are having 4GB RAM in your machine and you want to train your model on
10GB data set. How would you go about this problem? Have you ever faced this kind of
problem in your machine learning/data science experience so far?
First of all, you have to ask which ML model you want to train.

For Neural networks: Batch size with Numpy array will work.

Steps:

1. Load the whole data in the Numpy array. Numpy array has a property to create a
mapping of the complete data set, it doesn’t load complete data set in memory.
2. You can pass an index to Numpy array to get required data.
3. Use this data to pass to the Neural network.
4. Have a small batch size.

For SVM: Partial fit will work

Steps:

1. Divide one big data set in small size data sets.

2. Use a partial fit method of SVM, it requires a subset of the complete data set.
3. Repeat step 2 for other subsets.

However, you could actually face such an issue in reality. So, you could check out
the best laptop for Machine Learning to prevent that. Having said that, let’s move on
to some questions on deep learning.
DEEP LEARNING INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Q69. What do you mean by Deep Learning?
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.

Q70. What is the difference between machine learning and deep learning?
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.

1. Supervised machine learning,

2. Unsupervised machine learning,
3. Reinforcement learning

Deep Learning is a subfield of machine learning concerned with algorithms inspired by

the structure and function of the brain called artificial neural networks.

Q71. What, in your opinion, is the reason for the popularity of Deep Learning in recent
times?
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:

• The increase in the amount of data generated through various sources

• The growth in hardware resources required to run these models

GPUs are multiple times faster and they help us build bigger and deeper deep learning
models in comparatively less time than we required previously.
Q72. What is reinforcement learning?

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.

Q73. What are Artificial Neural Networks?

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.

Q74. Describe the structure of Artificial Neural Networks?

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.
Q75. How Are Weights Initialized in a Network?
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.

Q76. What Is the Cost Function?

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.

Q77. What Are Hyperparameters?

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.).

Q78. What Will Happen If the Learning Rate Is Set inaccurately (Too Low or Too
High)?
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).

Q79. What Is the Difference Between Epoch, Batch, and Iteration in Deep Learning?
• Epoch – Represents one iteration over the entire dataset (everything put into the
training model).
• Batch – Refers to when we cannot pass the entire dataset into the neural network
at once, so we divide the dataset into several batches.
• Iteration – if we have 10,000 images as data and a batch size of 200. then an epoch
should run 50 iterations (10,000 divided by 50).

Q80. What Are the Different Layers on CNN?

There are four layers in CNN:

1. Convolutional Layer – the layer that performs a convolutional operation, creating

several smaller picture windows to go over the data.
2. ReLU Layer – it brings non-linearity to the network and converts all the negative
pixels to zero. The output is a rectified feature map.
3. Pooling Layer – pooling is a down-sampling operation that reduces the
dimensionality of the feature map.
4. Fully Connected Layer – this layer recognizes and classifies the objects in the image.
Q81. What Is Pooling on CNN, and How Does It Work?
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.

Q82. What are Recurrent Neural Networks(RNNs)?

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.
Q83. How Does an LSTM Network Work?
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:

• Step 1: The network decides what to forget and what to remember.

• Step 2: It selectively updates cell state values.
• Step 3: The network decides what part of the current state makes it to the output.

Q84. What Is a Multi-layer Perceptron(MLP)?

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).

Q85. Explain Gradient Descent.

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).

Q86. What is exploding gradients?

While training an RNN, if you see exponentially growing (very large) error
gradients which accumulate and result in very large updates to neural network model
weights during training, they’re known as exploding gradients. 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 is unstable and unable to learn from your training
data.

Q87. What is vanishing gradients?

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.

Q89. What is Back Propagation and Explain it’s Working.

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:

 • Forward Propagation of Training Data
• Derivatives are computed using output and target
• Back Propagate for computing derivative of error wrt output activation
• Using previously calculated derivatives for output
• Update the Weights

Q90. What are the variants of Back Propagation?

• Stochastic Gradient Descent: We use only a single training example for
calculation of gradient and update parameters.
• Batch Gradient Descent: We calculate the gradient for the whole dataset and
perform the update at each iteration.
• Mini-batch Gradient Descent: It’s one of the most popular optimization
algorithms. It’s a variant of Stochastic Gradient Descent and here instead of single
training example, mini-batch of samples is used.

Q91. What are the different Deep Learning Frameworks?

• Pytorch
• TensorFlow
• Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit
• Keras
• Caffe
• Chainer

Q92. What is the role of the Activation Function?

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.

Q93. Name a few Machine Learning libraries for various purposes.

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

Q94. What is an Auto-Encoder?

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.

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Q95. What is a Boltzmann

Machine?
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.
 Q96. What Is Dropout and Batch
Normalization?

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.

Q97. What Is the Difference Between Batch Gradient Descent and Stochastic Gradient
Descent?
Batch Gradient Descent Stochastic Gradient Descent
The batch gradient computes the gradient The stochastic gradient computes the
using the entire dataset. gradient using a single sample.
It takes time to converge because the It converges much faster than the batch
volume of data is huge, and weights update gradient because it updates weight more
slowly. frequently.
Q98. Why Is Tensorflow the Most Preferred Library in Deep Learning?
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.

Q99. What Do You Mean by Tensor in Tensorflow?

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.”

Q100.
What is the Computational Graph?
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.”

Q101. What is a Generative Adversarial Network?

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:

1. Generator
2. Discriminator

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.

Q102. What are the important skills to have in Python with regard to data analysis?
The following are some of the important skills to possess which will come handy when
performing data analysis using Python.

• Good understanding of the built-in data types especially lists, dictionaries, tuples,
and sets.
• Mastery of N-dimensional NumPy Arrays.
 • Mastery of Pandas dataframes.
• Ability to perform element-wise vector and matrix operations on NumPy arrays.
• Knowing that you should use the Anaconda distribution and the conda package
manager.
• Familiarity with Scikit-learn. **Scikit-Learn Cheat Sheet**
• Ability to write efficient list comprehensions instead of traditional for loops.
• Ability to write small, clean functions (important for any developer), preferably pure
functions that don’t alter objects.
• Knowing how to profile the performance of a Python script and how to optimize
bottlenecks.

The following will help to tackle any problem in data analytics and machine learning.