Design an A/B test for a search ranking change

Last updated: July 30, 2025

Quick Overview

Design an experiment to test the impact of new pricing tiers. Include sample size calculation, metrics, and analysis plan.

Oracle
Analytics & Experimentation
Data Scientist
Oracle
July 30, 2025
Data Scientist
Take-home Project
Analytics & Experimentation
Easy

136

4

1,119 solved


Design an experiment to test the impact of new pricing tiers. Include sample size calculation, metrics, and analysis plan.

This analytics question from Oracle's Take-home Project tests your ability to think critically about data. The interviewer expects you to consider confounding variables, selection bias, and the difference between correlation and causation.

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
Segmentation and heterogeneous effects
Novelty and primacy effects
Sample size and power calculation
Guardrail metrics
Simpson's paradox and ecological fallacy
How to Approach This
  1. Define success metrics carefully. A good metric is measurable, actionable, and aligned with business goals.
  2. Run experiments long enough to account for novelty effects and weekly seasonality.
  3. Use funnel analysis to identify where users drop off for maximum optimization impact.
  4. Segment results by key dimensions (platform, country, user cohort) to catch hidden patterns.
  5. Consider network effects and interference between treatment and control groups.
Possible Follow-up Questions
  • How would you handle seasonality in your experiment?
  • What would you do if a stakeholder wants to end the experiment early because initial results look good?
  • How would you handle interference between treatment and control?
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