Interpret no significant difference from an experiment
Last updated: October 2, 2025
Quick Overview
An experiment shows a 3% lift with p=0.08. What conclusions can you draw? What are the caveats?
Microsoft
October 2, 202547
6
3,652 solved
An experiment shows a 3% lift with p=0.08. What conclusions can you draw? What are the caveats?
This analytics question from Microsoft's Onsite 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
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?
- What if you discover a bug in the logging during the experiment?
- How would you handle an experiment where the control and treatment groups are different sizes?
- What if the experiment shows a positive short-term effect but you suspect a negative long-term impact?
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Browse Analytics QuestionsSample Answer
Problem Setup
The analytical question at hand is whether a 3% lift observed in an experiment is statistically significant, given a p-value of 0.08. To analyze this, we need data on the control and treatment groups,...
Methodology
Given the p-value of 0.08, we are on the borderline of significance (typically p < 0.05 is considered significant). In this case, we would use a one-tailed or two-tailed t-test depending on our hypoth...
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