Associate Scientist Interview Questions

61,139 associate scientist interview questions shared by candidates

The interviewer asked about random forest and how it works. When I said that each decision tree in the forest considers a random subset of features, he disrespectfully interrupted me and told me that I am wrong. Then he scolded me for giving the "wrong" answer.
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Data Scientist

Interviewed at Fractal

4.1
Jul 12, 2018

The interviewer asked about random forest and how it works. When I said that each decision tree in the forest considers a random subset of features, he disrespectfully interrupted me and told me that I am wrong. Then he scolded me for giving the "wrong" answer.

Q: Given a function with inputs --an array with N randomly sorted numbers, and an int K, return output in an array with the K largest numbers. Q: 1. How does GMM/HMM work 2. Name some dimensional reduction method; I said PCA and we talked a bit about how PCA works and what's the physical intuiation 3. How K-means work, what kind of distance metric would you choose, what if different features have different dynamic range 4. How GMM works (EM algorithm)
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Applied Scientist

Interviewed at Amazon

3.5
Mar 9, 2016

Q: Given a function with inputs --an array with N randomly sorted numbers, and an int K, return output in an array with the K largest numbers. Q: 1. How does GMM/HMM work 2. Name some dimensional reduction method; I said PCA and we talked a bit about how PCA works and what's the physical intuiation 3. How K-means work, what kind of distance metric would you choose, what if different features have different dynamic range 4. How GMM works (EM algorithm)

They asked a lot of questions about my take-home project; in particular wanted to know about the reasons that I took the approach that I did. I could tell they were coming more from a statistical and economics background for the most part; while I'm more of an engineering and machine-learning hacker type standpoint. They also had a lot of "ambiguous" questions; by that, I mean questions about ambiguous business situations I might encounter in this position. Wanted to know how well I would do with ambiguous questions I might get from business leaders.
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Data Scientist

Interviewed at Pluralsight

2.9
Mar 5, 2017

They asked a lot of questions about my take-home project; in particular wanted to know about the reasons that I took the approach that I did. I could tell they were coming more from a statistical and economics background for the most part; while I'm more of an engineering and machine-learning hacker type standpoint. They also had a lot of "ambiguous" questions; by that, I mean questions about ambiguous business situations I might encounter in this position. Wanted to know how well I would do with ambiguous questions I might get from business leaders.

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