Analyze Posting Behavior by Cohort and Date
Company: TikTok
Role: Data Scientist
Category: Data Manipulation (SQL/Python)
Difficulty: Medium
Interview Round: Technical Screen
creator_post
+------------+---------+------+
| post_date | user_id | post |
+------------+---------+------+
| 2023-01-01 | 111 | 1 |
| 2023-01-01 | 222 | 2 |
| 2023-01-02 | 111 | 4 |
| 2022-01-03 | 333 | 10 |
+------------+---------+------+
##### Scenario
Product analytics team wants to understand posting behavior of content creators by acquisition cohort.
##### Question
Write SQL to assign each user to a cohort defined by their first post_date (first day they ever posted). For each cohort and each posting_date, return total posts and distinct active users. Order results by cohort_start_date and posting_date.
##### Hints
Use window functions or sub-query to get users’ MIN(post_date); join back to original table for aggregation.
Quick Answer: This question evaluates a candidate's ability to perform cohort-based user attribution and time-series aggregation, specifically assigning users to acquisition cohorts by their first activity and computing total posts and distinct active users by date.