Data Analytics

Interview Hacks
50 Q&A to Ace Your Interview
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Q1. What is data analytics?

Ans. It involves analyzing data to uncover insights and

support decision-making.

Q2. What is the difference between data analytics

and data science?

Ans. Data analytics focuses on analyzing past data, while

data science involves creating model s

for predictions and insights.

Q3. What are the types of data analytics?

Ans. Descriptive (what happened), diagnostic (why it happened),

predictive (what might happen), and prescriptive

(what actions to take).

Q4. What is descriptive analytics?

Ans. Analyzes historical data to summarize past events.

Q5. What is diagnostic analytics?

Ans. Investigates data to determine reasons behind past outcomes.

Q6. What is predictive analytics?

Ans. Uses historical data to forecast future trends or events.

Q7. What is prescriptive analytics?

Ans. Suggests actions to optimize outcomes based on data.

Q8. What is a data warehouse?

Ans. A centralized storage system for large volume s

of structured data.

Q9. What is ETL?

Ans. The process of Extracting, Transforming, and Loading

data into a data repository.

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Q10. What is a pivot table?

Ans. A tool in spreadsheets to summarize and analyze

data dynamically.

Q11. What is SQL?

Ans. A language for managing and querying relational databases.

What is a JOIN in SQL?

Ans. Combines rows from two or more tables based

on a related column.

Q12. What is a JOIN in SQL?

Ans. Combines rows from two or more tables based on

a related column.

Q13. What is normalization in databases?

Ans. Organizes data to minimize redundancy and improve integrity.

Q14. What is a data lake?

Ans. A storage system that holds raw data in its

native format until needed.

Q15. What is data cleaning?

Ans. The process of correcting or removing inaccurate

or irrelevant records.

Q16. What is a histogram?

Ans. A chart that shows the frequency distribution of numerical data.

Q17. What is a correlation coe fficient?

Ans. Measures the strength and direction of a linear

relationship between two variables.

Q1 8. What is regression anal ysis?

Ans. A method to understand relationships betwee n

variables and predict outcomes.

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 03

Q19. What is a hypothesis test?

Ans. A statistical test to determine if there is enough evidence to

reject a null hypothesis.

Q20. What is the difference between

supervised and unsupervised learning?

Ans. Supervised learning uses labeled data to train models,

while unsupervised learning finds patterns and

relationships in unlabeled data.

Q21. What are outliers?

Ans. Outliers are data points that are significantly different from

other data points in a dataset, which may indicate variability,

error, or a novel insight.

Q22. How do you handle missing data?

Ans. Missing data can be handled by removing records, imputing

values using statistical methods, or using algorithms that

support missing data.

Q23. What is the difference between linear and logistic regression?

Ans. Linear regression models the relationship between variables

with a continuous outcome, while logistic regression models

a binary outcome.

Q24. What is the Central Limit Theorem?

Ans. The Central Limit Theorem states that the sampling

distribution of the sample mean approaches a normal

distribution as the sample size increases, regardless of the

population distribution.

Q26. What is a time series analysis?

Ans. Time series analysis involves analyzing data points collected

or recorded at specific time intervals to identify trends,

seasonality, and other patterns.

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 04

Q27. What are the differences between R and Python?

Ans. R is a statistical programming language often used for data

analysis and visualization, while Python is a general-purpose

programming language with extensive libraries for data

analysis and machine learning.

Q28. Explain clustering in data analytics.

Ans. Clustering is an unsupervised learning technique that groups

similar data points together into clusters based on their

features.

Q29. What is normalization in data preprocessing?

Ans. Normalization is the process of scaling data into a specific

range, typically [0, 1], to ensure that each feature

contributes equally to the analysis.

Q30. What is data visualization?

Ans. Data visualization is the representation of data in graphical

or visual formats, such as charts, graphs, and maps, to make

data easier to understand and interpret.

Q31. What is a data model?

Ans. A data model is an abstract representation of the data,

including the structure, relationships, and constraints within

a dataset.

Q32. What are the types of joins in SQL?

Ans. The main types of joins are INNER JOIN, LEFT JOIN, RIGHT
JOIN, and FULL OUTER JOIN.

Q33. What is the difference between Type I and Type II errors?

Ans. A Type I error occurs when the null hypothesis is wrongly
rejected, while a Type II error occurs when the null

hypothesis is wrongly accepted.

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 05

Q34. What is data wrangling?

Ans. Data wrangling is the process of cleaning, transforming, and

organizing raw data into a usable format for analysis.

Q35. What is the difference between data and information?

Ans. Data are raw, unprocessed facts, while information is data

that has been processed and interpreted to have meaning.

Q36. What is data governance?

Ans. Data governance refers to the management of data

availability, usability, integrity, and security in an

organization.

Q37. What is variance in statistics?

Ans. Variance measures the dispersion of a set of data points

around their mean value. It quantifies how much the data

points differ from the mean.

Q38. What is a z-score?

Ans. A z-score indicates how many standard deviations a data

point is from the mean. It’s used to compare data points from

different distributions.

Q32. What is the purpose of exploratory data analysis (EDA)?

Ans. EDA is used to analyze and summarize the main

characteristics of a dataset, often using visual methods, to

uncover patterns, spot anomalies, and check assumptions.

Q33. What is a confusion matrix?

Ans. A confusion matrix is a table used to evaluate the

performance of a classification algorithm, showing the true

positives, false positives, true negatives, and false

negatives.

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 06

Q34. What are some common data visualization tools?

Ans. Common tools include Tableau, Power BI, QlikView, Google

Data Studio, and Matplotlib (Python).

Q35. Explain the concept of ‘dimensionality reduction.’

Ans. Dimensionality reduction involves reducing the number of

features or variables in a dataset while preserving as much

information as possible. Techniques include PCA (Principal

Component Analysis).

Q36. What is cross-validation?

Ans. Cross-validation is a technique used to assess the

generalizability of a statistical model by dividing the dataset

into training and testing sets multiple times.

Q37. What is overfitting in machine learning?

Ans. Overfitting occurs when a model performs well on training

data but fails to generalize to new data, often due to being

too complex.

Q38. How do you prevent overfitting?

Ans. Overfitting can be prevented by using techniques such as

cross-validation, regularization, pruning, and simplifying the

model.

Q39. What is an A PI in the context of data analytics?

Ans. An API (Application Programming Interface) allows different

software systems to communicate and exchange data. In

data analytics, APIs can be used to access and retrieve data

from various sources.

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 07

Q40. What is the difference between data analytics and

business intelligence?

Ans. Data analytics focuses on analyzing data to discover trends

and insights, while business intelligence involves using data

to make informed business decisions and includes tools for

reporting and dashboards.

Q41. What is the role of big data in analytics?

Ans. Big data refers to large, complex datasets that require

advanced tools and techniques to store, process, and

analyze. It enables organizations to analyze more data at a

faster rate and discover deeper insights.

Q42. Explain the term ‘machine learning.

Ans. Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence that

uses algorithms to learn patterns from data and make

predictions or decisions without explicit programming.

Q43. What is a decision tree?

Ans. A decision tree is a model used in machine learning for

classification and regression tasks. It splits the data into

branches based on feature values to arrive at a decision or

prediction.

Q44. What is a neural network?

Ans. A neural network is a computational model that mimics the

human brain by processing data through interconnected

nodes to recognize patterns and make decisions.

Q45. What is data cleaning?

Ans. Data cleaning involves removing or correcting inaccurate

records from a dataset. This may include handling missing

values, correcting errors, and standardizing data formats.

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 08

Q46. What are the steps in the data analytics process?

Ans. The steps typically include data collection, data cleaning,

data exploration, data modeling, and data interpretation or

reporting.

Q47. What is the difference between a database

and a data warehouse?

Ans. A database stores current data that is used for day-to-day

operations. A data warehouse stores historical data from

various sources, optimized for analysis and reporting.

Q48. What is a KPI?

Ans. Key Performance Indicator, a measurable value of success.

Q49. What is A/B testing?

Ans. Comparing two versions to determine which performs

better.

Q50. What is data normalization?

Ans. Scaling data to a common range, typically 0 to 1.

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