Top Data Science and Machine Learning Interview Questions 2022

Introduction 

Before we begin, rest assured that this compilation contains Data Science interview questions for freshers as well as early professionals. You will also learn top Machine Learning interview questions along the way! 

A multidisciplinary field called Data Science involves unprocessed data mining, its analysis, and discovering patterns utilized to extract meaningful information. The fundamental building blocks of Data Science are Statistics, Machine Learning, Computer Science, Data Analysis, Deep Learning, and Data Visualization. 

Due to the immense value of data, Data Science has become increasingly popular over time. Data is seen as the new resource of the future, and when correctly analyzed and utilized, it may be tremendously advantageous to the stakeholders.  

In addition to this, a Data Scientist has the opportunity to work in a variety of fields while using cutting-edge technology to solve challenges that apply to everyday life. Fast food delivery through applications like Uber Eats, which show the delivery worker the quickest path to take from the restaurant, is the most prevalent real-time application. In e-commerce sites like Amazon, Flipkart, etc., item recommendation systems that suggest to users what they should buy, based on their search history also use Data Science. In addition to recommendation systems, Data Science is being used in fraud detection software to find any fraud that may be present in credit-based financial applications. 

According to LinkedIn’s Emerging Jobs Report, Data Science is the fastest growing job in the world. The market is expected to expand from $37.9 billion in 2019 to $230.80 billion by 2026. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Data Science skills will see a 27.9% increase in employment by 2026. 

Top Data Science & Machine Learning Interview Question 

1.Explain the term Data Science?  

Data Science is an interdisciplinary field that consists of numerous scientific methods, tools, algorithms, and Machine Learning approaches that attempt to identify patterns in the provided raw input data and derive practical insights from it. 

The first step is to compile the pertinent data and business requirements. Data warehousing, data cleansing, architecture, and staging are used to store data after it has been gathered. 

Data exploration, mining, and analysis are tasks carried out by data processing, which are utilized to produce a summary of the findings obtained from the data. 

Following the exploratory phases, the cleaned data is exposed to a variety of algorithms, depending on the needs, such as regression,  predictive analysis, text mining, pattern recognition, etc. 

The results are finally presented to the company in a visually pleasing way. This is where the aptitude for reporting, data visualization, and various tools for business intelligence comes into play. 

2. What is the difference between Data Analytics and Data Science? 

Data Science is converting data through various technical analysis techniques to derive insightful conclusions that a data analyst can then apply to various business settings. 

Data analytics is concerned with examining the information and theories already in existence and providing the answers to queries for a more efficient and productive business-related decision-making process. 

Data Science fuels innovation by providing insights and solutions to issues from the future. While Data Science concentrates on predictive modeling, data analytics focuses on extracting current meaning from existing historical context. 

While data analytics is a specialized profession dealing with specialized concentration problems employing fewer statistics and visualization tools, Data Science may be considered a broad subject that uses many mathematical and scientific tools and methods for tackling complex problems. 

3. What is Selection Bias? 

When the researcher selects the study subjects, selection bias occurs. It is frequently related to studies in which participants are not chosen at random. Sometimes people call it the selecting effect. It is a statistical analysis distortion brought on by the sampling technique. Some study conclusions might not be correct if the selection bias is not considered. 

These are some examples of selection bias: 

Sampling bias is a type of systematic error that occurs when a non-random sampling of a population prefers some members of the population over others, producing a biased sample. 

The extreme value is most likely to be reached by the variable with the biggest variance, even if all variables have a comparable mean. Trials may be stopped early at extreme values, but the extreme value is likely to be reached by that variable. 

4. What are some of the techniques used for sampling? What is its main advantage? 

Especially when dealing with larger datasets, data analysis cannot be performed on the entire volume of data at once. Collecting certain data samples may be analyzed and used to represent the entire population becomes essential. While doing this, it is imperative to carefully select sample data from the enormous data collection that accurately reflects the complete dataset. 

According to the use of statistics, there are primarily two sorts of sampling strategies, namely: 

• Simple random sampling, stratified sampling, and clustered sampling are probability sampling approaches 
• Quota sampling, convenience sampling, snowball sampling, and other non-probability sampling methods 

5. What is a bias-variance trade-off? 

Any supervised Machine Learning algorithm’s objective is to have little bias and little volatility to produce accurate predictions. 

The k-nearest neighbor approach has a low bias and a high variance; however, the trade-off can be altered by increasing the value of k, which raises the number of neighbors who contribute to the prediction and, thus, increases the bias of the model. 

The support vector machine technique has a low bias and a large variance, but the trade-off can be modified by increasing the C parameter, which affects how many breaches of the margin are permitted in the training data, increasing the bias while reducing the variance. 

The connection between bias and variance in Machine Learning cannot be avoided. The variance will decrease if the bias is increased. Bias will diminish if the variation is increased. 

6. When is resampling done? 

Re-sampling is a method for sampling data that helps to better understand the accuracy of population parameters and to measure their level of uncertainty. Training the model on various patterns from a dataset ensures that variances are handled and that the model is sufficient. Additionally, it is carried out when tests must be run on data points with different labels or when models must be confirmed using random subsets. 

7. Do the expected value and mean value differ in any way? 

These two have few distinctions, although it should be noted that they are employed in various circumstances. The anticipated value is used when dealing with random variables, whereas the mean value typically refers to the probability distribution. 

8. What are confounding variables? 

Confounders are sometimes referred to as confounding variables. These variables are a particular category of auxiliary variables that have an impact on both independent and dependent variables, leading to erroneous mathematical relationships between variables that are correlated but are not incidentally related to one another. 

9. Deep learning: What is it? What distinguishes Machine Learning from Deep Learning? 

A Machine Learning paradigm is deep learning. Deep learning uses numerous layers of processing to obtain high-quality features from the data. Neural networks are created in a way that mimics the way the human brain functions. 

Due to its excellent similarities to the human brain, Deep Learning has demonstrated extraordinary performance in recent years. Machine learning and Deep Learning vary in that artificial neural networks, which are a paradigm or component of Machine Learning inspired by the structure and operations of the human brain, are used in Deep Learning. 

10. What is a computational graph? 

A “Dataflow Graph” is another name for a computation graph. TensorFlow is a well-known Deep Learning framework built entirely on the computational graph. Tensorflow’s computational graph consists of a network of nodes, each of which has an associated function. This graph’s edges correspond to tensors, while its nodes correspond to operations. 

11. What are auto-encoders? 

Networks for learning are auto-encoders. With the fewest errors possible, they convert inputs into outputs. In essence, this implies that the result we seek should be roughly equal to or close to the input, as shown in the following. 

Further layers are added between the input and the output layer, and the layers between the input and the output layer are smaller than the original layer. Unlabeled input given to it is encoded so that it can later be decoded. 

12. What are exploding gradients and vanishing gradients? 

Consider that you are training an RNN. Exploding Gradients Imagine you observed accumulating error gradients that develop exponentially, causing significant modifications to the neural network model weights. Exploding Gradients are the name given to these exponentially expanding error gradients that substantially change the neural network weights. 

Again, let’s assume that you are training an RNN. Vanishing Gradients Imagine that the slope shrank too much. Vanishing Gradient is the technical term for this issue where the slope gets too small. It results in a significant increase in training time, poor performance, and incredibly low accuracy. 

13. How regularly must we update an algorithm in the field of Machine Learning? 

We do not want to update and make modifications to an algorithm regularly since an algorithm is a clearly defined step procedure to solve any problem, and if the steps are constantly changing, it can no longer be claimed to be well-defined. Additionally, it becomes challenging to introduce continuous and regular updates, which creates many issues for the systems already using the algorithm. As a result, we should only update an algorithm in the instances described below: 

• It is reasonable to modify an algorithm and update it as necessary if you want the model to change as data flows through the infrastructure. 

• It is always necessary to modify the algorithm when the underlying data source changes. 

• We may modify the procedure if a non-stationarity case arises. 

• Any algorithm’s poor performance and inefficiency are two of the most crucial justifications for upgrading it. Therefore, if an algorithm is inefficient or performs poorly, it should either be updated or replaced with a better method. 

14. How will you handle missing values while analyzing the data? 

• After determining the type of variables that contain missing values, the impact of those missing values can be determined. 

• There is a probability of discovering important insights if the data analyst can identify any patterns in these missing values. 

• If no patterns are detected, the missing numbers may be ignored or replaced with default values such as the mean, minimum, maximum, or median. 

• Categorical variables’ missing values are allocated default values if they are absent. The mean values are applied to the missing values if the data has normally distributed. 

• It is up to the analyst to decide whether to eliminate the variables or replace the missing data with default values if 80% of the values are missing. 

Conclusion 

We hope that this list of Data Science interview Questions and answers will be useful to you as you prepare for your interviews.  

You may learn about Machine Learning Algorithms like Decision Trees, Random Forest, and Naive Bayes in UNexr Jigsaw’s specifically curated best Data Science courses. You will gain knowledge of time series, statistics, text mining, and a basic understanding of deep learning. You can perform real-world case studies on healthcare, media, social media, aviation, and human resources.