Answer the following interview-style probability/statistics questions. Provide formulas and short explanations.
-
Bayes’ rule:
State Bayes’ rule. Given a disease prevalence
P(D)=1%
, a test sensitivity
P(+∣D)=0.99
, and false positive rate
P(+∣¬D)=0.05
, compute
P(D∣+)
.
-
Controls in regression:
In an observational setting, why might adding control variables change the estimated coefficient on a variable of interest? When can adding controls introduce bias?
-
CLT:
State the Central Limit Theorem and its practical implication for the sampling distribution of the sample mean.
-
Uniform distribution moments:
If
X∼Unif(a,b)
, compute
E[X]
and
Var(X)
.
-
Hypothesis test / t-stat:
For testing
H0:μ=μ0
with sample mean
xˉ
, sample standard deviation
s
, and sample size
n
, write the one-sample t-statistic.
-
Effect size vs MDE:
Define effect size and Minimum Detectable Effect (MDE). How do power, variance, sample size, and alpha affect MDE?