Write a query to find retention rate from clicks
Last updated: July 27, 2025
Quick Overview
Write a SQL query to calculate retention rate from the clicks table, considering nulls and duplicates.
Compass
July 27, 202510
6
2,220 solved
Write a SQL query to calculate retention rate from the clicks table, considering nulls and duplicates.
This question from Compass's Phone Screen tests practical data skills. The interviewer wants to see clean, efficient queries that handle edge cases like NULLs, duplicates, and large datasets.
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
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 validate the correctness of your query results?
- How would you handle slowly changing dimensions in this scenario?
- Can you rewrite this without using subqueries?
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Practice SQL ProblemsSample Answer
Problem Understanding
The task is to compute the retention rate from a clicks table. This table likely contains user clicks on a product or service along with timestamps. The retention rate will typically measure how man...
Approach
- Identify Time Periods: Define the time frames for initial clicks and subsequent clicks (e.g., initial period as '2023-01-01' to '2023-01-31' and subsequent as '2023-02-01' to '2023-02-28').
- ...
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