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Evaluate impact without randomized experiments

Last updated: Mar 29, 2026

Quick Overview

This question evaluates a data scientist's competence in causal inference and identification strategies for estimating promotion effects from observational longitudinal data, emphasizing challenges such as staggered rollout, interference (spillovers), seasonality, and uncertainty quantification.

  • hard
  • Uber
  • Analytics & Experimentation
  • Data Scientist

Evaluate impact without randomized experiments

Company: Uber

Role: Data Scientist

Category: Analytics & Experimentation

Difficulty: hard

Interview Round: Technical Screen

If you cannot run an experiment, propose and justify at least three identification strategies to estimate the promotion’s causal effect, including assumptions, diagnostics, and failure modes: (1) Difference‑in‑Differences/event‑study with staggered rollout using modern estimators (avoid naive TWFE bias), parallel‑trends checks, and placebo tests; (2) Synthetic Control at the geo level with pre‑period fit metrics and sensitivity to donor pool/regularization; (3) Instrumental Variables exploiting exogenous variation (e.g., eligibility rules, random delivery outages), with relevance/exclusion checks and weak‑IV diagnostics; (4) Regression Discontinuity if eligibility thresholds exist (e.g., tenure ≥ 30 days), with bandwidth/functional‑form sensitivity and McCrary density tests; (5) Propensity‑score or doubly‑robust learners (IPW/AIPW, causal forests) with overlap checks and covariate balance. Explain how you would report ATE/ATT with uncertainty, account for interference/network effects, and control for seasonality and concurrent campaigns.

Quick Answer: This question evaluates a data scientist's competence in causal inference and identification strategies for estimating promotion effects from observational longitudinal data, emphasizing challenges such as staggered rollout, interference (spillovers), seasonality, and uncertainty quantification.

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Uber logo
Uber
Oct 13, 2025, 9:49 PM
Data Scientist
Technical Screen
Analytics & Experimentation
5
0

Estimating a Promotion's Causal Effect Without an Experiment

Context

You need to estimate the causal impact of a marketing promotion on engagement (e.g., trips, bookings, revenue) when a randomized experiment is not feasible. You have longitudinal data at user/geo × time granularity, with information on promotion eligibility/exposure, outcomes, covariates, and rollout timing that may be staggered across units.

Task

Propose and justify at least three distinct identification strategies to estimate the promotion’s causal effect. For each strategy, clearly state:

  • Identification setup and estimator(s)
  • Key assumptions
  • Diagnostics and robustness checks
  • Failure modes and how you would detect/mitigate them

You may choose from (or add to) the following:

  1. Difference-in-Differences (DiD) / Event Study with staggered rollout using modern estimators (avoid naive TWFE bias), including parallel-trends checks and placebo tests.
  2. Synthetic Control at the geo level with pre-period fit metrics and sensitivity to donor pool/regularization.
  3. Instrumental Variables exploiting exogenous variation (e.g., eligibility rules, random delivery outages), with relevance/exclusion checks and weak-IV diagnostics.
  4. Regression Discontinuity if eligibility thresholds exist (e.g., tenure ≥ 30 days), with bandwidth/functional-form sensitivity and McCrary density tests.
  5. Propensity-score or doubly-robust learners (IPW/AIPW, causal forests) with overlap checks and covariate balance.

Additionally, explain how you would:

  • Report ATE/ATT with uncertainty
  • Account for interference/network effects (spillovers)
  • Control for seasonality and concurrent campaigns

Solution

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