Top 20 Python Interview Questions for Data Roles

Hey there, data enthusiasts!

Vishal Malhotra here, a Data Scientist at American Express.

7 years in this industry and I can tell you that Python interview questions are bound to come up when you're interviewing for data science roles.

From data cleaning and wrangling to building complex machine-learning models, Python has become an indispensable tool in our arsenal.

To help you prepare for the Python interviews, I've put together a comprehensive list of the top 20 Python interview questions that cover a wide range of topics, including:

👉 Python fundamentals (data structures, functions, classes, etc.)

👉 Data manipulation with pandas

👉 Statistical concepts and probability

👉 Algorithms and data structures

👉 Machine learning techniques

Let’s dive in.

Basic Python Interview Questions

1. What is the difference between lists and tuples in Python?
2. How do you iterate over a dictionary in Python?
3. What are lambda functions in Python, and how are they used?
4. Explain the concept of generators in Python and their use cases.
5. How do you handle exceptions in Python?

String Manipulation Interview Questions

1. How do you reverse a string in Python?
2. Write a Python function to check if a given string is a palindrome.
3. Implement a function to find the longest common prefix among a list of strings.

Statistics and Probability Interview Questions

1. Write a Python function to calculate the mean, median, and mode of a list of numbers.
2. How would you generate random numbers with a normal distribution in Python?
3. Implement a function to calculate the correlation coefficient between two lists of numbers.

Python Pandas Interview Questions

1. How do you read and write data from/to a CSV file using Pandas?
2. Explain the difference between 
3. Write a Python function to handle missing data in a Pandas DataFrame.

Matrices and NumPy Python Interview Questions

1. How do you create a 2D array in NumPy?
2. Implement a function to calculate the matrix multiplication of two matrices using NumPy.
3. Write a Python function to find the inverse of a square matrix using NumPy.

Python Data Structures and Algorithms Interview Questions

1. Implement a function to find the kth smallest element in an unsorted list.
2. Write a Python program to implement the merge sort algorithm.

Python Machine Learning Interview Questions

1. Explain the difference between supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms.
2. How do you handle imbalanced datasets in machine learning?
3. Implement a function to calculate the accuracy score of a classifier given the true labels and predicted labels.

If you want to discuss any of these questions or need any help with your data science interviews, I’m just a call away.

Click here to schedule a free 1:1 call with me.

All the best for your interviews!