Calculate expected value for user retention
Last updated: May 13, 2026
Quick Overview
Given the following scenario about user conversion, calculate the the p-value.
Palantir
May 13, 20269
4
1,401 solved
Given the following scenario about user conversion, calculate the the p-value.
Palantir asks this during the Technical Screen to assess your experimentation skills. They want to see how you define success metrics, design controlled experiments, and interpret results with appropriate statistical rigor.
What the Interviewer Expects
- Define clear success metrics aligned with business goals
- Propose a basic experimental design with control and treatment groups
- Interpret results correctly and draw reasonable conclusions
- Identify obvious confounding variables
Key Topics to Cover
How to Approach This
- Define success metrics carefully. A good metric is measurable, actionable, and aligned with business goals.
- Run experiments long enough to account for novelty effects and weekly seasonality.
- Use funnel analysis to identify where users drop off for maximum optimization impact.
- Segment results by key dimensions (platform, country, user cohort) to catch hidden patterns.
- Consider network effects and interference between treatment and control groups.
Possible Follow-up Questions
- How would you handle interference between treatment and control?
- How would you handle seasonality in your experiment?
- What if you discover a bug in the logging during the experiment?
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Problem Setup
To analyze user retention for Palantir, we need to frame our analytical question: "What is the expected value of user retention given a specific conversion funnel?" We will require data on user engage...
Methodology
The specific statistical approach for this problem will involve calculating the expected value of user retention using a retention formula that incorporates both conversion rates and retention metrics...
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