Explain the Central Limit Theorem, and the difference between correlation and causation (with Simpson's paradox).
Core statistics screening that catches people who run tests without grasping why they work. The signal is what the CLT actually licenses, and a correlation-vs-causation answer that uses Simpson's paradox to expose a confounder.
Updated Sep 2026 · Grounded in real GenAI, LLM, and AI/ML engineering interview loops and written to a senior-engineer editorial bar.
Core statistics screening that catches people who run tests without grasping why they work. The signal is what the CLT actually licenses, and a correlation-vs-causation answer that uses Simpson's paradox to expose a confounder.
Lead with where the obvious approach breaks, because that is the judgment they are screening for — most candidates jump straight to the happy path and lose the room.
Then walk the failure back through the pipeline in order, naming the one metric the customer's exec sponsor actually cares about before you propose the fix.
