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8 LCI Industries SQL Interview Questions (Updated 2024)

Updated on

June 30, 2024

At LCI Industries, SQL used for analyzing production data for quality control and managing supply-chain logistics. For this reason LCI Industries asks SQL query questions during interviews for Data Science and Data Engineering positions.

So, to help you study, here's 8 LCI Industries SQL interview questions – able to solve them?

LCI Industries SQL Interview Questions

8 LCI Industries SQL Interview Questions

SQL Question 1: Calculate the monthly average sales per product

LCI Industries manufactures leisure products across various product lines and these products are sold globally. You are given a dataset named 'sales' containing product-wise sales information, such as product_id, sales_date, and units_sold. Now, each product may have multiple entries in a given month because products are sold throughout the month.

The task is to write a SQL query to calculate the average sales per product for each month.

Example Input:
sales_idsales_dateproduct_idunits_sold
1012022-06-015000110
1022022-06-07698525
1032022-06-155000115
1042022-07-02698528
1052022-07-12698527
Example Output:
monthproductavg_units_sold
65000112.50
6698525.00
7698527.50

Answer:


This query first extracts the month from the sales_date using . It then groups the data by 'month' and 'product' and for each group, it calculates the average units sold. The result is ordered by 'month' and 'product'. The function works on the set of values for each group and returns the average sales per product for each month.

p.s. Window functions show up pretty often during SQL interviews, so practice the 27+ window function questions on DataLemur

SQL Interview Questions on DataLemur

SQL Question 2: 2nd Highest Salary

Given a table of LCI Industries employee salary data, write a SQL query to find the 2nd highest salary among all employees.

LCI Industries Example Input:

employee_idsalary
12500
2800
31000
41200

Example Output:

second_highest_salary
1200

Test your SQL query for this interview question and run your code right in DataLemur's online SQL environment:

2nd Highest Salary SQL Interview Question

Answer:


You can find a step-by-step solution with hints here: 2nd Highest Salary.

Check out the LCI Industries career page, to see what qulifications they're looking for!

SQL Question 3: What's a constraint in SQL, and do you have any examples?

Constraints are just rules your DBMS has to follow when updating/inserting/deleting data.

Say you had a table of LCI Industries products and a table of LCI Industries customers. Here's some example SQL constraints you'd use:

NOT NULL: This constraint could be used to ensure that certain columns in the product and customer tables, such as the product name and customer email address, cannot contain NULL values.

UNIQUE: This constraint could be used to ensure that the product IDs and customer IDs are unique. This would prevent duplicate entries in the respective tables.

PRIMARY KEY: This constraint could be used to combine the NOT NULL and UNIQUE constraints to create a primary key for each table. The product ID or customer ID could serve as the primary key.

FOREIGN KEY: This constraint could be used to establish relationships between the LCI Industries product and customer tables. For example, you could use a foreign key to link the customer ID in the customer table to the customer ID in the product table to track which products each customer has purchased.

CHECK: This constraint could be used to ensure that certain data meets specific conditions. For example, you could use a CHECK constraint to ensure that LCI Industries product prices are always positive numbers.

DEFAULT: This constraint could be used to specify default values for certain columns. For example, you could use a DEFAULT constraint to set the customer registration date to the current date if no value is provided when a new customer is added to the database.

LCI Industries SQL Interview Questions

SQL Question 4: Analyzing Click-Through and Conversion Rates for LCI Industries

LCI Industries is a company that is interested in understanding how effective their digital marketing strategies are. They specifically want to understand click-through rates (CTR) of their ads and also the conversion rates – the percentage of users who add a product to a cart after viewing it.

Here are the two tables with some sample data to setup the problem:

click_iduser_idclick_timead_id
523110106/08/2022 00:00:0068284
763223406/10/2022 00:00:0063873
819367506/11/2022 00:00:0068284
624235906/11/2022 00:00:0063873
991789806/12/2022 00:00:0068284
action_iduser_idproduct_idaction_time
29171017280006/08/2022 00:05:00
20822346240506/10/2022 00:10:00
39436757280006/12/2022 00:00:00
22423596240506/11/2022 00:15:00
79178987280006/12/2022 00:09:00

The table represents all the clicks on various ads, with each ad representing a product. The table represents users adding products to the cart. The same user id in both tables indicates that the user clicked an ad and then added the same product to the cart.

Now let's write a query that calculates the click-through rate and conversion rate per ad for a given period:

Answer:


This query first calculates the total number of clicks for each ad and the total number of products added to the cart for each ad. It then joins these two tables and calculates the conversion rate by dividing the number of cart additions by the total clicks for each ad. The coalesce function ensures that if there are no matches in the table for an ad, it would consider the as 0 to avoid any division by zero errors.

To practice another question about calculating rates, try this TikTok SQL Interview Question on DataLemur's online SQL code editor: SQL interview question from TikTok

SQL Question 5: In SQL, are values same the same as zero or a blank space?

A value represents a missing or unknown value. It is different from a zero or a blank space, which are actual values.

It's important to handle values properly in SQL because they can cause unexpected results if not treated correctly. For example, comparisons involving values always result in . Also values are not included in calculations. For example, will ignore values in the column.

SQL Question 6: Average Cost Analysis of Materials

LCI Industries is into manufacturing and supplying of a range of products in the automobile, marine, and rail industries. As a part of cost control and efficiency exercise, find out the average cost of materials used by the company in each quarter of the year.

We have the table that contains information about the materials purchased by the company, and their costs.

Example Input:
material_idpurchase_datematerial_typecost
00101/15/2022Steel1050
00202/12/2022Aluminum800
00303/08/2022Rubber300
00404/20/2022Steel1200
00505/16/2022Aluminum870
00606/22/2022Plastic200
00707/18/2022Steel1150
00808/20/2022Aluminum920

We need to derive a result that looks something like this:

Example Output:
quartermaterial_typeavg_cost
Q1Steel1050.00
Q1Aluminum800.00
Q1Rubber300.00
Q2Steel1200.00
Q2Aluminum870.00
Q2Plastic200.00
Q3Steel1150.00
Q3Aluminum920.00

Answer:


With this query, we are using the clause with the aggregate function to calculate the average cost of each material type in each quarter. We have used a statement to map the months to their corresponding quarters. The query returns the average cost grouped by quarter and material type.

SQL Question 7: What is the purpose of a primary key in a database?

A primary key is a column or group of columns that uniquely identifies a row in a table. For example, say you had a database of LCI Industries marketing campaigns data:


In this LCI Industries example, the CampaignID column is the primary key of the MarketingCampaigns table. The constraint ensures that no two rows have the same CampaignID. This helps to maintain the integrity of the data in the table by preventing duplicate rows.

SQL Question 8: Calculate Average Considering Discounts for Each ProductCategory

LCI Industries operates a large number of manufacturing facilities across various regions. They offer products that are eligible for different levels of discounts. We want to calculate the average price for each product category after taking into account the discounts that have been applied.

Consider the following tables:

Example Input:
product_idproduct_nameproduct_categoryprice
1001Solar PanelEnergy150
1002Bike RackOutdoor90
1003Window ACCooling250
1004Portable HeaterHeating75
1005Tire KitAutomotive50
Example Input:
product_iddiscount_percentage
10015
100210
100315
100420
100525

Write a PostgreSQL query to calculate the average price for each after deducting the discount. Round the result to two decimal places.

The output should contain and .

Answer:


This query fist joins the and tables based on . The average price for each product category is calculated by first subtracting the discount percentage from the price, and this result is averaged using the AVG function. The ROUND function is used to restrict the result to two decimal places. The result is grouped by to get the average price for each category after taking into account the discounts.

To practice a very similar question try this interactive Amazon Highest-Grossing Items Question which is similar for calculating results for each category or this Amazon Average Review Ratings Question which is similar for calculating average metrics for each product.

LCI Industries SQL Interview Tips

The key to acing a LCI Industries SQL interview is to practice, practice, and then practice some more! Beyond just solving the above LCI Industries SQL interview questions, you should also solve the 200+ tricky sql questions on DataLemur which come from companies like Facebook, Google, and VC-backed startups. DataLemur Questions

Each interview question has multiple hints, fully explained answers along with a discussion board to see how others solved it and crucially, there is an interactive coding environment so you can right online code up your SQL query answer and have it executed.

To prep for the LCI Industries SQL interview it is also useful to practice interview questions from other automotive companies like:

In case your SQL coding skills are weak, forget about going right into solving questions – improve your SQL foundations with this DataLemur SQL Tutorial.

Free SQL tutorial

This tutorial covers topics including math functions in SQL and AND/OR/NOT – both of these come up often in LCI Industries SQL assessments.

LCI Industries Data Science Interview Tips

What Do LCI Industries Data Science Interviews Cover?

In addition to SQL query questions, the other types of questions tested in the LCI Industries Data Science Interview are:

  • Probability & Stats Questions
  • Python Pandas or R Coding Questions
  • Product-Sense Questions
  • ML Interview Questions
  • Behavioral Interview Questions

LCI Industries Data Scientist

How To Prepare for LCI Industries Data Science Interviews?

The best way to prepare for LCI Industries Data Science interviews is by reading Ace the Data Science Interview. The book's got:

  • 201 Interview Questions from companies like Google, Tesla, & Goldman Sachs
  • A Crash Course on Python, SQL & ML
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