Will your Data Scientists pass this test?

Questions to Ask Your Data Scientists

Given we had to create a set of skills needed for this position, we thought perhaps we should share those with our clients so they can also understand what expertise they need to be looking for in Data Scientists.

Questions:
    1.    Explain the difference between artificial neural networks with softmax activation function, logistical regression and Max Entropy classifier.


    2.    What software packages do you use for data visualization? Explain pros and cons of each.


    3.    How would you efficiently represent more than 3 dimensions in a chart?
    4.    What is Edward Tufte’s concept of ‘chartjunk’?


    5.    What language do you prefer for analysis and model creation (Python, R, etc.)? Explain your choice.


    6.    What are artificial neural networks and support vector machines? What kind of data is appropriate for each? Please include subtypes.


    7.    What is a principal components analysis (PCA) and what is it used for?


    8.    What is cluster analysis and how does it differ from principal component analysis?


    9.    How do you determine what methods to use for a specific set of data?


    10.    Do you think the imputation of missing data is acceptable? Explain your answer.


    11.    Why is it important in certain methods to split your dataset into training sets and test sets?


    12.    What is a recommendation engine or suggestion engine? How does it work?


    13.    Can you provide an example of how you would use experimental design to answer a question about user behavior?


    14.    What is a false positive and a false negative? Give examples of situations where a false positive is more important than a false negative, a false negative is more important than a false positive, and when these two types of errors are equally important.

    1.    You have data on duration of calls to your call centre. Create a plan of how you would code and analyze this data. Plausibly explain what the distribution of these durations might look like. How could you test whether your explanations are accurate?