Scribd
Upload
10 views4 pages

41 Essential Machine Learning Interview Questions (1/4)

This document discusses machine learning interview questions. It covers 41 essential machine learning interview questions organized into categories including algorithms/theory, programming skills, industry trends, and company-specific questions. Example questions are provided for algorithms/theory categories, covering topics like bias-variance tradeoff, supervised vs unsupervised learning, differences between KNN and k-means clustering, and how ROC curves work.

Uploaded by

Hammouda Nourelhouda
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
10 views4 pages

41 Essential Machine Learning Interview Questions (1/4)

This document discusses machine learning interview questions. It covers 41 essential machine learning interview questions organized into categories including algorithms/theory, programming skills, industry trends, and company-specific questions. Example questions are provided for algorithms/theory categories, covering topics like bias-variance tradeoff, supervised vs unsupervised learning, differences between KNN and k-means clustering, and how ROC curves work.

Uploaded by

Hammouda Nourelhouda
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 4

41 Essential Machine

Learning Interview
Questions
www.springboard.com
18 mins read
M
achine learning interview questions are an integral part
of the data science interview and the path to becoming a
data scientist, machine learning engineer, or data engi-
neer. Springboard created a free guide to data science interviews, so
we know exactly how they can trip up candidates! In order to help
resolve that, here is a curated and created a list of key questions that
you could see in a machine learning interview. There are some
answers to go along with them so you don’t get stumped. You’ll be
able to do well in any job interview (even for a machine learning
internship) with after reading through this piece.

Machine Learning Interview Questions:


Categories
We’ve traditionally seen machine learning interview questions pop up
in several categories. The first really has to do with the algorithms
and theory behind machine learning. You’ll have to show an under-
standing of how algorithms compare with one another and how to
measure their efficacy and accuracy in the right way. The second cat-
egory has to do with your programming skills and your ability to exe-
cute on top of those algorithms and the theory. The third has to do
with your general interest in machine learning: you’ll be asked about
what’s going on in the industry and how you keep up with the latest
machine learning trends. Finally, there are company or industry-spe-
cific questions that test your ability to take your general machine
learning knowledge and turn it into actionable points to drive the bot-
tom line forward.

We’ve divided this guide to machine learning interview questions into


the categories we mentioned above so that you can more easily get to
the information you need when it comes to machine learning inter-
view questions.

Machine Learning Interview Questions:


Algorithms/Theory

These algorithms questions will test your grasp of the theory behind
machine learning.

Q1- What’s the trade-off between bias and variance?

More reading: Bias-Variance Tradeoff (Wikipedia)

Bias is error due to erroneous or overly simplistic assumptions in the


learning algorithm you’re using. This can lead to the model underfit-
ting your data, making it hard for it to have high predictive accuracy
and for you to generalize your knowledge from the training set to the
test set.

Variance is error due to too much complexity in the learning algo-


rithm you’re using. This leads to the algorithm being highly sensitive
to high degrees of variation in your training data, which can lead your
model to overfit the data. You’ll be carrying too much noise from your
training data for your model to be very useful for your test data.

The bias-variance decomposition essentially decomposes the learning


error from any algorithm by adding the bias, the variance and a bit of
irreducible error due to noise in the underlying dataset. Essentially, if
you make the model more complex and add more variables, you’ll lose
bias but gain some variance — in order to get the optimally reduced
amount of error, you’ll have to tradeoff bias and variance. You don’t
want either high bias or high variance in your model.
Q2- What is the difference between supervised and unsu-
pervised machine learning?

More reading: What is the difference between supervised and unsuper-


vised machine learning? (Quora)

Supervised learning requires training labeled data. For example, in


order to do classification (a supervised learning task), you’ll need to
first label the data you’ll use to train the model to classify data into
your labeled groups. Unsupervised learning, in contrast, does not
require labeling data explicitly.

Q3- How is KNN different from k-means clustering?

More reading: How is the k-nearest neighbor algorithm different from


k-means clustering? (Quora)

K-Nearest Neighbors is a supervised classification algorithm, while


k-means clustering is an unsupervised clustering algorithm. While the
mechanisms may seem similar at first, what this really means is that
in order for K-Nearest Neighbors to work, you need labeled data you
want to classify an unlabeled point into (thus the nearest neighbor
part). K-means clustering requires only a set of unlabeled points and
a threshold: the algorithm will take unlabeled points and gradually
learn how to cluster them into groups by computing the mean of the
distance between different points.

The critical difference here is that KNN needs labeled points and is
thus supervised learning, while k-means doesn’t — and is thus unsu-
pervised learning.

Q4- Explain how a ROC curve works.

More reading: Receiver operating characteristic (Wikipedia)

The ROC curve is a graphical representation of the contrast between


true positive rates and the false positive rate at various thresholds.
It’s often used as a proxy for the trade-off between the sensitivity of

You might also like