Diagnosing and Mitigating Cold Food Deliveries
Context
Customers report that delivered food often arrives cold. As the data scientist on the delivery quality (Dasher) team, you must diagnose root causes and design an experiment to test a mitigation (e.g., insulated bags, optimized routing).
Tasks
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Investigate root causes of cold deliveries using a delivery funnel (prep → pickup → travel → drop-off).
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Define the core metrics and specify which data to pull.
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Design an experiment to test a mitigation (e.g., insulated bags, routing/dispatch changes). Include:
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Hypothesis
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Treatment and control
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Unit of randomization and targeting
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Success metrics (primary/secondary/guardrails)
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Runtime and sample size calculation
Hints
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Use funnel analysis: prep time, pickup wait, travel time.
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Define a quantitative temperature proxy.
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Consider a staged A/B test across zones.
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Monitor delivery time, reorder rate, and complaint rate.