Join events and clicks to find cumulative sum
Last updated: October 21, 2025
Quick Overview
Write a query joining events and transactions to produce the combined cumulative sum.
Jane Street
Data Manipulation (SQL/Python)
Data Scientist
Jane Street
October 21, 2025Data Scientist
Onsite
Data Manipulation (SQL/Python)
Medium
30
5
4,999 solved
Write a query joining events and transactions to produce the combined cumulative sum.
Data manipulation questions at Jane Street test your ability to work with real-world datasets. This Onsite question evaluates your SQL proficiency, understanding of data modeling, and ability to derive insights from raw data.
What the Interviewer Expects
- Use advanced SQL features: window functions, CTEs, subqueries
- Write efficient queries that avoid common performance pitfalls
- Handle complex data transformations with multiple joins and aggregations
- Discuss indexing strategy and query optimization
- Address data quality issues: duplicates, missing values, outliers
Key Topics to Cover
Subqueries and correlated subqueries
Date/time manipulation
Index optimization and query performance
JOIN types and when to use each
Pandas vectorized operations and groupby
How to Approach This
- Clarify the schema and expected output format before writing queries.
- Use CTEs (WITH clauses) to break complex queries into readable steps.
- Consider window functions (ROW_NUMBER, RANK, LAG, LEAD) for ranking and sequential analysis.
- Watch for NULLs, duplicates, and edge cases in JOINs and GROUP BY.
- For pandas, prefer vectorized operations over row-by-row iteration.
Possible Follow-up Questions
- How would you optimize this query for a table with 100 million rows?
- What indexes would you create to support this query?
- Can you rewrite this without using subqueries?
- How would you handle slowly changing dimensions in this scenario?
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Practice SQL ProblemsSample Answer
Problem Understanding
In this scenario, we have two tables: events and transactions. The events table records user interactions with various events, including a timestamp and an event ID. The transactions table rec...
Approach
- Identify the Join Condition: Determine the common keys between
eventsandtransactionsto join the tables (e.g.,user_id). - Choose the Right Join Type: Use an INNER JOIN to focus on...
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