10 PENN Entertainment SQL Interview Questions (Updated 2024)
PENN Entertainment employees write SQL queries to analyze customer behaviors, helping them create marketing campaigns that align with their audience preferences. They also manage data for their real-time gaming services, ensuring a smooth and engaging experience for players, that is why PENN Entertainment asks SQL problems in interviews for Data Science, Analytics, and Data Engineering jobs.
So, to help you prep for the PENN Entertainment SQL interview, we'll cover 10 PENN Entertainment SQL interview questions – scroll down to start solving them!
10 PENN Entertainment SQL Interview Questions
SQL Question 1: Identifying VIP Customers at PENN Entertainment
Given the tables and at the fictional company PENN Entertainment, write a SQL query to identify the customers who have spent the most in terms of total transaction value in the past year. A VIP customer is defined as a customer belonging to the top 1% in terms of total transaction value.
Example Input:
| transaction_id | customer_id | transaction_date | transaction_value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 101 | 111 | 2022/01/01 | 150.50 |
| 102 | 222 | 2022/02/14 | 2000.00 |
| 103 | 111 | 2022/07/23 | 99.99 |
| 104 | 333 | 2022/05/08 | 10.00 |
| 105 | 222 | 2022/08/26 | 500.00 |
Example Input:
| customer_id | customer_name | customer_joined_date |
|---|---|---|
| 111 | Alice | 2021/12/01 |
| 222 | Bob | 2021/12/01 |
| 333 | Charlie | 2021/12/01 |
Answer:
This query first calculates the total transaction value for each customer in the last year, and then it calculates the 99th percentile of these total values, defining this as the threshold to be a VIP customer. Lastly, it selects the customers whose total transaction value is greater or equal to this threshold. The final result is a list of VIP customers sorted by their total transaction value in descending order.
To practice a related customer analytics question on DataLemur's free online SQL code editor, try this Microsoft Teams Power User SQL Interview Question:
Discover the latest press releases from Penn Entertainment and see how they are transforming the entertainment landscape! Keeping an eye on their updates can help you understand the innovative strategies that drive their success.
SQL Question 2: Second Highest Salary
Assume you had a table of PENN Entertainment employee salary data. Write a SQL query to find the 2nd highest salary amongst all the .
PENN Entertainment Example Input:
| employee_id | salary |
|---|---|
| 1 | 2500 |
| 2 | 800 |
| 3 | 1000 |
| 4 | 1200 |
Example Output:
| second_highest_salary |
|---|
| 1200 |
You can solve this problem and run your code right in the browser:
Answer:
You can find a detailed solution with hints here: 2nd Highest Salary.
SQL Question 3: Can you explain the difference between a foreign and primary key in a database?
A primary key is a column (or set of columns) in a table that uniquely identifies each row in the table. It cannot contain null values and must be unique across all rows in the table.
A foreign key is a column (or set of columns) in a table that references the primary key of another table. It is used to establish a relationship between the two tables. A foreign key can contain null values, and multiple rows in the referencing table can reference the same row in the referenced table.
For example, consider a database with two tables: and . The PENN Entertainment customers table might have a primary key column called , while the PENN Entertainment orders table might have a foreign key column called that references the column in the table. This establishes a relationship between the two tables, such that each row in the orders table corresponds to a specific PENN Entertainment customer.
SQL Question 4: Monthly Averages of Song Streams for Top 10 Artists
PENN Entertainment is keen to understand how its Top 10 artists are performing in terms of song streams on a monthly basis. Given a table with , , and , write a SQL query to retrieve the , , and for the top 10 artists based on the total .
Example Input:
| artist_id | song_id | stream_date | stream_count |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 01/05/2021 | 1250 |
| 1 | 2 | 01/06/2021 | 850 |
| 1 | 3 | 01/07/2021 | 920 |
| 2 | 4 | 01/06/2021 | 1240 |
| 2 | 5 | 01/07/2021 | 1660 |
| 3 | 6 | 01/08/2021 | 810 |
| 4 | 7 | 01/07/2021 | 500 |
| 5 | 8 | 01/05/2021 | 600 |
| 6 | 9 | 01/06/2021 | 350 |
| 7 | 10 | 01/08/2021 | 900 |
Answer:
This PostgreSQL query first creates a subquery with the average monthly stream counts (using a window function), and a subquery with the total stream counts for each artist. Finally, it selects the average monthly stream counts for artists that appear in the top 10 list, ordered by and .
p.s. Window functions show up super often during SQL interviews, so practice the 27+ window function questions on DataLemur
SQL Question 5: Why are stored procedures useful for analysts?
Stored procedures in SQL are like recipes in a cookbook. Just like a recipe tells you the ingredients and instructions for making a particular dish, a stored procedure tells the DBMS the logic/statements needed to perform a specific task. Just like you can use a recipe to make the same dish over and over again, you can use a stored procedure to repeat the same task multiple times with different input parameters (which is why stored procedures are so damn useful!).
Say you were a Data Analyst working on a HR analytics project. A common sub-task you might have to do is calculate the average salary for a given department at PENN Entertainment, which would be perfect for a stored procedure:
To call this stored procedure and find the average salary for the Data Science department you'd execute a query like this:
SQL Question 6: Filtering customer records
PENN Entertainment is a leading network of cinemas and theaters. They store customer data in a database where each record represents an individual customer's ticketing activity. They have asked you to help consolidate this data.
The task is to write a SQL query that will fetch the information of customers who're aged between 20 to 30 years and have either subscribed to the Premium Membership or both News and Updates Newsletter and Special Offers Newsletter. Exclude the records of customers who made a purchase in the last 30 days.
The table has the following schema:
Example Input:
| customer_id | age | last_purchase_date | premium_member | newsletter_news_updates | newsletter_special_offers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 25 | 06/05/2022 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 2 | 34 | 06/18/2022 | No | Yes | No |
| 3 | 29 | 06/20/2022 | No | Yes | Yes |
| 4 | 22 | 07/26/2021 | Yes | No | No |
| 5 | 27 | 07/05/2022 | Yes | Yes | No |
Please use PostgreSQL for this task.
Answer:
Here is a SQL query that achieves this:
This query will return the records of all customers between 20 and 30 years of age who are either premium members or subscribers to both News & Updates and Special Offers newsletters. It excludes customers who made any purchase in the last 30 days.
SQL Question 7: Why are foreign key's important in databases?
A foreign key is a field in a database table that serves as a reference to the primary key of another table, allowing for the creation of a relationship between the two tables.
For a concrete example, let's inspect employee data from PENN Entertainment's HR database:
:
| employee_id | first_name | last_name | manager_id |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aubrey | Graham | 3 |
| 2 | Marshal | Mathers | 3 |
| 3 | Dwayne | Carter | 4 |
| 4 | Shawn | Carter |
In this table, is the primary key, and is used to uniquely identify each row.
could be a foreign key. It references the of the manager of each employee in the table, establishing a relationship between the employees and their managers. This foreign key allows you to easily query the table to find out who a specific employee's manager is, or to find out which employees report to a specific manager.
It is possible for a table to have multiple foreign keys that reference primary keys in different tables. For instance, the table could have additional foreign keys for the of the department where an employee works and the of the employee's location.
SQL Question 8: Calculate the Average Duration of Shows in PENN Entertainment
As a data analyst at PENN Entertainment, you are tasked with finding the average duration of all shows per genre. PENN Entertainment is a company that hosts various types of entertainment performances like concerts, plays, and stand-up comedy acts. For simplicity, assume the genre falls into three categories: 'Music', 'Theater', 'Comedy'.
Here are the table that you have:
Example Input:
| show_id | genre | perform_date | duration_minutes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1001 | Music | 06/22/2022 19:30:00 | 200 |
| 1002 | Theater | 06/23/2022 18:00:00 | 150 |
| 1003 | Music | 06/24/2022 20:00:00 | 180 |
| 1004 | Comedy | 06/25/2022 19:00:00 | 60 |
| 1005 | Theater | 06/26/2022 18:00:00 | 180 |
Your goal is to come up with a PostgreSQL query that would output the following result:
Example Output:
| genre | avg_duration_min |
|---|---|
| Music | 190.0 |
| Theater | 165.0 |
| Comedy | 60.0 |
Answer:
Here is the required SQL query:
This query combines rows from the table that share the same genre (using ), and for each unique genre, calculates the average show duration in minutes (using ).
To practice a very similar question try this interactive Amazon Highest-Grossing Items Question which is similar for calculating top values within each category or this Facebook Average Post Hiatus (Part 1) Question which is similar for computing averages in a category.
SQL Question 9: Calculate the total revenue from each type of event per month.
As an analyst at PENN Entertainment, you have been asked to find out the total revenue generated from each type of event, per month, for the last year. PENN Entertainment organizes several events like concerts, plays, and movie screenings where each event has a specific ticket price.
Use the following tables and .
Table:
| event_id | event_type | event_date | ticket_price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Concert | 06/01/2022 | 125.00 |
| 2 | Concert | 06/15/2022 | 100.00 |
| 3 | Movie | 07/10/2022 | 15.00 |
| 4 | Play | 06/20/2022 | 50.00 |
| 5 | Play | 07/15/2022 | 75.00 |
Table:
| sale_id | event_id | tickets_sold |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 1 | 500 |
| 101 | 2 | 400 |
| 102 | 3 | 300 |
| 103 | 4 | 150 |
| 104 | 5 | 200 |
Answer:
Sample Output:
| month | event_type | total_revenue |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | Concert | 82500 |
| 6 | Play | 7500 |
| 7 | Play | 15000 |
| 7 | Movie | 4500 |
In the resulting output, the data represents the revenues from each event type sorted by month. By looking at this data, management can see what types of events perform best during certain months and also understand their revenue diversification.
SQL Question 10: What does do, and when would you use this SQL command?
When using , only rows that are identical in both sets will be returned.
For a concrete example, say you were a Data Analyst supporting the Sales Analytics team at PENN Entertainment, and data on potential sales leads lived in both Salesforce and Hubspot CRMs. To write a query to analyze leads created before 2023 started, that show up in BOTH CRMs, you would use the command:
How To Prepare for the PENN Entertainment SQL Interview
The key to acing a PENN Entertainment SQL interview is to practice, practice, and then practice some more! Besides solving the above PENN Entertainment SQL interview questions, you should also solve the 200+ SQL coding questions which come from companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon.
Each problem on DataLemur has hints to guide you, step-by-step solutions and crucially, there is an online SQL code editor so you can easily right in the browser your SQL query answer and have it graded.
To prep for the PENN Entertainment SQL interview you can also be useful to practice SQL problems from other hospitality and restaurant companies like:
- Caesars Entertainment SQL questions
- Darden Restaurants SQL questions
- Chipotle SQL questions
- MGM Resorts SQL questions
But if your SQL skills are weak, don't worry about jumping right into solving questions – go learn SQL with this SQL tutorial for Data Analytics.
This tutorial covers topics including LEFT vs. RIGHT JOIN and working with string/text data – both of which show up often in SQL job interviews at PENN Entertainment.
PENN Entertainment Data Science Interview Tips
What Do PENN Entertainment Data Science Interviews Cover?
In addition to SQL interview questions, the other types of questions to practice for the PENN Entertainment Data Science Interview include:
- Probability & Stats Questions
- Python or R Coding Questions
- Open-Ended Data Case Studies
- ML Interview Questions
- Behavioral Based Interview Questions
How To Prepare for PENN Entertainment Data Science Interviews?
To prepare for the PENN Entertainment Data Science interview have a deep understanding of the company's culture and values – this will be clutch for acing the behavioral interview. For the technical Data Science interviews, get ready by reading Ace the Data Science Interview. The book's got:
- 201 Interview Questions from Facebook, Google & startups
- A Refresher covering SQL, Product-Sense & ML
- Great Reviews (1000+ reviews, 4.5-star rating)