Easy EDA Question 42 of 220

What should you do first when you receive a new dataset?

Data Science track · Speak this in 60–90 seconds · Faridabad & Delhi NCR

PICTURE THIS: SQL JOIN

Left tableKeep these rows

Match keyuser_id = id

Right tableINNER drops misses

Simple meaning

Confirm grain, time range, source, and how the extract was filtered before computing fancy stats.

WHY — EDA instead of guessing?

Why interviewers care about EDA:

EDA questions separate people

who only read docs from people who shipped.

Keep it short, concrete,

and tied to Data Science work.

Stay structured

Name the idea, why it exists, then one short example.

Close cleanly

End with when you use it and one common pitfall.

STEPS — What happens step by step?

Before you speak the answer, walk the interviewer through these steps:

1
Confirm grain, time range,
source, and how the extract was filtered before computing fancy stats.
2
Then check shape, dtypes,
missingness, duplicates, and a few raw rows.
3
Those steps catch join
explosions and truncated dumps that would invalidate every later chart.
4
Give an example
One tiny concrete case you can say aloud.
5
Common mistake
What juniors usually get wrong.
6
Close
When you pick this over the alternative.

EXAMPLE — See it in action

Here's a short line you can speak, broken into clear beats:

Say this line

“Then check shape, dtypes, missingness, duplicates, and a few raw rows.”

Break into beats

Thencheckshapedtypesmissingnessduplicates

Speaking order

2987408337471632900

Note: Adapt this scaffold to your own project — keep it under 60–90 seconds.

Key takeaway

Confirm grain, time range, source, and how the extract was filtered before computing fancy stats. Then check shape, dtypes, missingness, duplicates, and a few raw rows.