Calculate retention rate per product

Last updated: November 27, 2025

Quick Overview

Write a query to compute retention rate grouped by region, handling edge cases like nulls and duplicates.

Meta
Data Manipulation (SQL/Python)
Data Scientist
Meta
November 27, 2025
Data Scientist
Phone Screen
Data Manipulation (SQL/Python)
Easy

539

7

3,343 solved


Write a query to compute retention rate grouped by region, handling edge cases like nulls and duplicates.

Data manipulation questions at Meta test your ability to work with real-world datasets. This Phone Screen question evaluates your SQL proficiency, understanding of data modeling, and ability to derive insights from raw data.

What the Interviewer Expects
  • Write syntactically correct SQL with proper JOIN and WHERE clauses
  • Use GROUP BY and aggregate functions appropriately
  • Handle NULL values correctly in your queries
  • Explain the query execution plan at a high level
Key Topics to Cover
Window functions (ROW_NUMBER, RANK, LAG, LEAD)
Date/time manipulation
Subqueries and correlated subqueries
Index optimization and query performance
How to Approach This
  1. Clarify the schema and expected output format before writing queries.
  2. Use CTEs (WITH clauses) to break complex queries into readable steps.
  3. Consider window functions (ROW_NUMBER, RANK, LAG, LEAD) for ranking and sequential analysis.
  4. Watch for NULLs, duplicates, and edge cases in JOINs and GROUP BY.
  5. For pandas, prefer vectorized operations over row-by-row iteration.
Possible Follow-up Questions
  • How would you handle slowly changing dimensions in this scenario?
  • What would you do if this query needs to run every 5 minutes?
  • Can you rewrite this without using subqueries?
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