Compute most popular location with weights
Company: Microsoft
Role: Software Engineer
Category: Data Manipulation (SQL/Python)
Difficulty: Medium
Interview Round: Technical Screen
You are given a dataset of voting records for concert locations. Each record includes voter_id, location_text, and an optional numeric weight (default
1). Write SQL and/or Python to compute the most popular location by total vote weight. Explain how you handle ties, missing or malformed location_text, and verify correctness with a small example. Analyze the time and space complexity of your solution.
Quick Answer: This question evaluates a candidate's ability to perform weighted aggregation, data cleaning, tie-breaking logic, and handling of malformed or missing text fields using SQL and/or Python.