Define market-only rider experience metrics

Quick Overview

This question evaluates a data scientist's competency in designing market-only rider experience metrics and a composite Market Balance Index, testing skills in marketplace metric specification, survival/hazard modeling, price-adjusted indexing, censoring and normalization rules, and experimental backtesting using server-side logs.

Define market-only rider experience metrics

Company: Uber

Role: Data Scientist

Category: Analytics & Experimentation

Difficulty: hard

Interview Round: Onsite

Define market-only rider experience metrics for a rides marketplace where 'experience' must reflect supply–demand dynamics, not app UI or vehicle quality. Propose a metric suite (e.g., request fill rate within 5 minutes, time-to-match, quoted ETA at request, realized pickup wait, rider wait-hazard, price-adjusted wait index) and a single composite Market Balance Index with an explicit formula and weights. Specify precise definitions, sampling windows, censoring rules for unfulfilled requests, holiday/outage exclusions, and a backtest showing sensitivity to supply/demand shocks but insensitivity to UI releases.

Quick Answer: This question evaluates a data scientist's competency in designing market-only rider experience metrics and a composite Market Balance Index, testing skills in marketplace metric specification, survival/hazard modeling, price-adjusted indexing, censoring and normalization rules, and experimental backtesting using server-side logs.

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Oct 13, 2025, 9:49 PM
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Market-only Rider Experience Metrics and Market Balance Index (MBI)

You are designing a metric suite for a rides marketplace where "rider experience" must reflect market balance (supply–demand dynamics) rather than app UI or vehicle quality. All metrics should be derivable from server-side marketplace logs and be robust to UI changes.

Tasks

  1. Define a market-only metric suite that captures rider experience via supply–demand mechanics. Include, at minimum:
    • Request Fill Rate within 5 minutes (FR5)
    • Time-to-Match (TTM)
    • Quoted pickup ETA at request time
    • Realized pickup wait
    • Rider wait-hazard (survival/hazard-based)
    • Price-adjusted wait index
  2. Provide precise metric definitions, including:
    • Event and unit definitions (what constitutes an intent, request, match, pickup)
    • Sampling windows and aggregation levels
    • Censoring rules for unfulfilled requests and cancellations
    • Holiday/outage exclusions and normalization
  3. Propose a single composite Market Balance Index (MBI) with an explicit, computable formula and weights across sub-metrics. Explain scaling/normalization so MBI is comparable over markets and time.
  4. Design a backtest that demonstrates sensitivity of the metric suite and MBI to supply/demand shocks (e.g., weather, events) but insensitivity to UI releases. Describe the study design and report illustrative results.
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