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Design Experiment to Measure Airport Surge-Pricing Impact

Last updated: Mar 29, 2026

Quick Overview

This question evaluates expertise in experimental design and causal inference for two-sided marketplaces, including competencies in randomization/unit selection, handling interference and spillovers, clustering, timing windows, and choice of primary and secondary metrics.

  • hard
  • Upstart
  • Analytics & Experimentation
  • Data Scientist

Design Experiment to Measure Airport Surge-Pricing Impact

Company: Upstart

Role: Data Scientist

Category: Analytics & Experimentation

Difficulty: hard

Interview Round: Technical Screen

##### Scenario Measuring the causal impact of airport surge-pricing push notifications on driver supply ##### Question How would you design an experiment to measure whether the push notification increases driver supply at the airport? Which primary and secondary success metrics would you track, and how would you account for spill-over effects on untreated drivers? Describe how you would establish causal impact while handling interference between treated and control drivers. ##### Hints Consider geographic clustering, holdout zones, difference-in-differences, network interference adjustments.

Quick Answer: This question evaluates expertise in experimental design and causal inference for two-sided marketplaces, including competencies in randomization/unit selection, handling interference and spillovers, clustering, timing windows, and choice of primary and secondary metrics.

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Upstart
Aug 4, 2025, 10:55 AM
Data Scientist
Technical Screen
Analytics & Experimentation
59
0

Experiment Design: Causal Impact of Airport Surge-Pricing Push Notifications on Driver Supply

Context

You operate a two-sided ride-hailing marketplace. A new push notification is sent to eligible drivers when the airport is in surge, aiming to attract more drivers to the airport. Drivers within and around the airport can see and respond to the push at overlapping times, so interference (spillovers) between treated and untreated drivers is plausible.

Task

Design an experiment to measure whether the push notification causally increases driver supply at the airport while handling potential interference.

Please address:

  1. Experimental design: randomization unit(s), holdouts, timing windows, and any clustering.
  2. Primary and secondary success metrics to track.
  3. How you will detect and account for spillovers on untreated drivers.
  4. How you will identify causal impact in the presence of interference (e.g., geographic clustering, holdout zones, difference-in-differences, network interference adjustments).

Solution

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