Dangerous Interview Puzzles

Even if you have become Pro in Excel and SAS, one thing that will keep haunting you mostly during an interview are logical puzzles. These puzzles are asked to you to test your logical and analytical thinking and would keep haunting you for quite a long span of your career.

Let us look at some very frequently asked puzzles asked during interviews.

Add numbers (including missing) without "Sum function" and "If statements"

A contemporary SAS interview question

Recently, a friend shared a SAS interview question that she faced in one of the Interviews she appeared in.
The question might sound very basic initially but when I heard about the constraints, I found it too be quite tricky one. It required to make a little more use of my grey matter.

Sharing, how I approached to the problem .

Mini Market Basket Analysis

An interesting interview question

Recently I appeared in several interviews and faced a variety of  SAS related questions and puzzles. One of those SAS puzzle / question was quite interesting, which I would like to share with you guys with its answer and SAS code !

Hope you get to learn something from the same.

A join called " Self join"

Recently, when I took quite a many interviews, one of the most commonly question I faced was "what is Self Join?".

I know the word "Self" explains it all, but let us try to understand it more explicitly!

Self join is something when a table is joined to itself. 

Okay! Let us now try to learn things through an example.

Super cool yet unpopular text functions for Spelling Distance

Text Mining and Analytics on unstructured data are buzz words these days in the world of Analytics.

Well, then why @ Ask Analytics, we should be lagging behind ...

Let's start with few basic Text function that can be leveraged during text mining exercises for string comparison and standardization and then we would build up further on complex algorithms. These functions are good, but I don't know why have remained unpopular.

So are you ready ?

How to Approach Guesstimation Questions

Approaching Guesstimation Questions

In one of the first job interviews I ever appeared for, my interviewer asked me to guess or estimate the number of donuts sold by  ‘Dunkin’ Donuts’ in Delhi the week before.  

As much as I love having donuts, all those images of caramel-filled, sugar-topped, melt-in-the-mouth donuts floating through my head at that moment could not tempt me, because all I could think of was, ‘How on earth am I supposed to know this?!!’

Does this situation sound familiar to you? If your answer is 'Yes', you're in luck! Here we come to help you out ...

Proc SQL vs. Data Step in SAS - Part 2

Join (Proc SQL) vs. Merge (Data step)

Your wait is over. Let's deep dive a little into the background working algorithm of Join and Merge. This one is quite interesting, here efficiency as well as the result may vary ...

Please go through the first part of this else it would be like start watching a movie at interval.

Proc SQL vs. Data Step in SAS - Part 1

How Data Step in SAS and Proc SQL differ and which one should I use and where ?

Is that even a big question that one should bother about ? Leaving syntax, is there even a difference between two? Probably, you must be thinking about these points, Right ?

Of course, you need to ask these question ... so let me explain the key differences between the two and suggest you the best practice.

Difference between "Where" and "Having" in Proc SQL

What is the difference between the "Where" and "Having" statements in Proc SQL ?

Common but only partially correct answer:

Where uses parent variable for sub-setting, while Having is used for sub-setting data on the basis of calculated variables.  

Precautions while merging datasets in SAS

What Precautions would you take while merging two datasets in SAS ?

Precautions while merging datasets is one of the hot favourite questions of SAS interviewers.

Either you can give cliche answer for sake of answering, or you can answer to impress ... choice is all yours !

Difference between Nodupkey and Nodup in Proc Sort ?

What is the difference between the Nodupkey and Nodup options in Proc Sort ?

Since ages SAS interviewers have not stopped asking this question  ... and of all the people whom I have interviewed, none has given a satisfactory answer to me.

What exactly should one reply ... not only to answer, but also to impress ?