Write a query to find percentile rank from transactions
Last updated: August 29, 2025
Quick Overview
Write a SQL query to calculate percentile rank from the transactions table, considering nulls and duplicates.
Palantir
August 29, 202586
3
2,104 solved
Write a SQL query to calculate percentile rank from the transactions table, considering nulls and duplicates.
Data manipulation questions at Palantir test your ability to work with real-world datasets. This Take-home Project 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
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?
- How would you validate the correctness of your query results?
- How would you handle slowly changing dimensions in this scenario?
- What would you do if this query needs to run every 5 minutes?
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Practice SQL ProblemsSample Answer
Approach
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Solution Pattern
```sql WITH filtered_data AS ( SELECT * FROM main_table WHERE condition = 'value' AND date_col >= '2024-01-01' ), aggregated AS ( SELECT ...
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