Determine Key Statistics for Article Comment Distribution Analysis
Company: Meta
Role: Data Scientist
Category: Statistics & Math
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Onsite
##### Scenario
Analyzing distribution of the number of comments each article receives on a content website.
##### Question
You receive the full distribution of comment counts per article. Which summary statistics would you compute and why? When might the mean be misleading compared with the median? How would you detect and treat outliers in the comment counts? If product managers want to know whether a recent UI change increased engagement, which statistical test would you choose and why?
##### Hints
Think about skewed count data, heavy-tailed distributions, robust statistics, and basic hypothesis testing.
Quick Answer: This question evaluates statistical data-analysis competencies such as descriptive and robust summary statistics, outlier detection, handling of zero-inflated and heavy-tailed count data, and selection of appropriate hypothesis tests in the domain of Statistics & Math for a Data Scientist role.