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Active User Retention Facebook SQL Interview Question
Active User Retention
Facebook SQL Interview Question
This is the same question as problem #23 in the SQL Chapter of Ace the Data Science Interview!
Assume you're given a table containing information on Facebook user actions. Write a query to obtain number of monthly active users (MAUs) in July 2022, including the month in numerical format "1, 2, 3".
Hint:
- An active user is defined as a user who has performed actions such as 'sign-in', 'like', or 'comment' in both the current month and the previous month.
Table:
| Column Name | Type |
|---|---|
| user_id | integer |
| event_id | integer |
| event_type | string ("sign-in, "like", "comment") |
| event_date | datetime |
Example Input:
| user_id | event_id | event_type | event_date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 445 | 7765 | sign-in | 05/31/2022 12:00:00 |
| 742 | 6458 | sign-in | 06/03/2022 12:00:00 |
| 445 | 3634 | like | 06/05/2022 12:00:00 |
| 742 | 1374 | comment | 06/05/2022 12:00:00 |
| 648 | 3124 | like | 06/18/2022 12:00:00 |
Example Output for June 2022:
| month | monthly_active_users |
|---|---|
| 6 | 1 |
Example
In June 2022, there was only one monthly active user (MAU) with the 445.
Please note that the output provided is for June 2022 as the table only contains event dates for that month. You should adapt the solution accordingly for July 2022.
The dataset you are querying against may have different input & output - this is just an example!
Solution
In order to calculate the active user retention, we need to identify users who were active in both the current month and the previous month. We can approach this in two steps:
Step 1: Find users who were active in the previous month
To accomplish this, we can use the following code:
- We alias the table as in the FROM clause to indicate that this table contains information from the previous month.
- In the WHERE clause, we match users in the table to the table based on user ID.
- means that a particular user from the last month exists in the current month, indicating that this user was active in both months.
- subtracts one month from the current month's date to give us last month's date.
Important: Please note that you won't be able to run this query on its own, as it references another table which is not included in this query. We will provide you with the complete query to run later. For now, focus on understanding the logic behind the solution."
Step 2: Find users who are active in the current month and also existed in the previous month
To accomplish this, we use the operator to check for users in the current month who also exist in the subquery, which represents active users in the previous month (identified in Step 1). Note that the table is aliased as to indicate that this represents the current month's user information.
To extract the month information from the column, we use the function. Then, we use a over the to obtain the count of monthly active users for the current month.
Here's the complete query to run in the editor:
Results:
| month | monthly_active_users |
|---|---|
| 7 | 2 |
In July 2022, there are only 2 distinct users who are active in both the previous month and the current month.