Investigate Sudden Revenue Drop: Steps and Metrics Analyzed
Overview
This question evaluates a data scientist's analytical reasoning, familiarity with product analytics and experimentation, and ability to perform root-cause analysis when key business metrics like revenue change unexpectedly.
Coinbase
Aug 4, 2025, 10:55 AM
Data Scientist
Technical Screen
Analytics & Experimentation
0
0
Scenario
A product’s weekly revenue has suddenly dropped.
Task
Describe, step by step, how you would investigate and diagnose the root cause of a sudden revenue drop. Specify the metrics, funnel stages, and segmentations you would examine.
Hints
- Decompose revenue into multiplicative drivers (e.g., traffic × conversion × price/AOV × take rate).
- Segment by acquisition channel, cohort, geography, device/platform, time of day/day of week, and product lines.
- Consider experiments, pricing/fee changes, external market conditions, outages, and data quality.
Assumptions (minimal context for clarity)
- You have access to product analytics, marketing data, revenue/transaction logs, and experimentation logs.
- Revenue is primarily generated from user transactions (e.g., trades, purchases) with a fee or margin component.
Solution
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