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Estimate Portal’s causal lift on video-call usage

Last updated: Mar 29, 2026

Quick Overview

This question evaluates applied causal inference and statistical analysis skills, including defining estimands, designing staggered-adoption difference‑in‑differences/event‑study regressions with fixed effects, propensity‑based selection control and matching/weighting, power analysis for low treated share, and robustness and sensitivity checks.

  • Medium
  • Meta
  • Statistics & Math
  • Data Scientist

Estimate Portal’s causal lift on video-call usage

Company: Meta

Role: Data Scientist

Category: Statistics & Math

Difficulty: Medium

Interview Round: Technical Screen

Define and estimate the causal effect of purchasing a Meta Portal on users’ video‑calling behavior. Today is 2025-09-01, and only a small fraction purchase Portal. 1) Estimand: choose a primary outcome (e.g., weekly call minutes on any device per user) and state the causal estimand (ATE on treated buyers). Specify pre/post windows relative to each buyer’s purchase date, e.g., pre: [−28, −1] days; post: [+1, +28] days. 2) Observational design: propose a staggered‑adoption difference‑in‑differences/event‑study with user and time fixed effects. Write the regression specification, list assumptions (parallel trends, no anticipation), and describe pre‑trend and placebo checks. 3) Selection control: design a propensity model using pre‑purchase behavior (call frequency, recipient diversity, device modality, country, age buckets), do matching/weighting (exact on country, caliper on propensity, overlap trimming), and compare top‑decile matching vs full IPW in terms of bias/variance. 4) Small treated share: perform a back‑of‑envelope power analysis assuming 1% treated, baseline weekly mean 30 minutes (SD 60), MDE 10% relative. Show how CUPED using pre‑period outcomes reduces variance and affects sample size. 5) Robustness: address survivorship and novelty effects, seasonality, clustering by household, and measurement noise in durations. Include sensitivity analysis (e.g., Rosenbaum bounds) and negative‑control outcomes. 6) Reporting: define uncertainty (cluster‑robust CIs), heterogeneity (by prior usage and country), and decision thresholds for launch/scale.

Quick Answer: This question evaluates applied causal inference and statistical analysis skills, including defining estimands, designing staggered-adoption difference‑in‑differences/event‑study regressions with fixed effects, propensity‑based selection control and matching/weighting, power analysis for low treated share, and robustness and sensitivity checks.

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Meta
Oct 13, 2025, 9:49 PM
Data Scientist
Technical Screen
Statistics & Math
5
0
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Define and estimate the causal effect of purchasing a Meta Portal on users’ video‑calling behavior. Today is 2025-09-01, and only a small fraction purchase Portal.

  1. Estimand: choose a primary outcome (e.g., weekly call minutes on any device per user) and state the causal estimand (ATE on treated buyers). Specify pre/post windows relative to each buyer’s purchase date, e.g., pre: [−28, −1] days; post: [+1, +28] days.
  2. Observational design: propose a staggered‑adoption difference‑in‑differences/event‑study with user and time fixed effects. Write the regression specification, list assumptions (parallel trends, no anticipation), and describe pre‑trend and placebo checks.
  3. Selection control: design a propensity model using pre‑purchase behavior (call frequency, recipient diversity, device modality, country, age buckets), do matching/weighting (exact on country, caliper on propensity, overlap trimming), and compare top‑decile matching vs full IPW in terms of bias/variance.
  4. Small treated share: perform a back‑of‑envelope power analysis assuming 1% treated, baseline weekly mean 30 minutes (SD 60), MDE 10% relative. Show how CUPED using pre‑period outcomes reduces variance and affects sample size.
  5. Robustness: address survivorship and novelty effects, seasonality, clustering by household, and measurement noise in durations. Include sensitivity analysis (e.g., Rosenbaum bounds) and negative‑control outcomes.
  6. Reporting: define uncertainty (cluster‑robust CIs), heterogeneity (by prior usage and country), and decision thresholds for launch/scale.

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