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Top 33 Optimisation Interview Questions

Entry Junior Mid Senior Expert
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Optimisation Theoretical Questions

Q1:   

What is Optimisation in Machine Learning?

  
Add to PDF   Entry 
Q2:   

What are Bayesian Optimization Methods?

  
Add to PDF   Junior 
Q3:   

When would you use Grid Search vs Random Search for Hyperparameter Tuning?

  Related To: ML Design Patterns, Dimensionality Reduction
Add to PDF   Junior 
Q4:   

What methods of Hyperparameters Tuning do you know?

  Related To: ML Design Patterns, Model Evaluation, Dimensionality Reduction
Add to PDF   Junior 
Q5:   

What are Differentiable Objective Functions?

  
Add to PDF   Junior 
Q6:   

What are Non-Differentiable Objective Functions?

  
Add to PDF   Junior 
Q7:   

Why do you need to know Convex Optimization?

  
Add to PDF   Junior 
Q8:   

When should we use Algorithms like Adam as opposed to SGD?

  Related To: Gradient Descent
 Add to PDF   Mid 
Q9:   

How does Batch Size affect the Convergence of SGD and why?

  Related To: Gradient Descent
 Add to PDF   Mid 
Q10:   

When are Genetic Algorithms a good choice for Optimisation?

  Related To: Genetic Algorithms
 Add to PDF   Mid 
Q11:   

Why does Newton's Method only use First and Second Derivatives, not Third or Higher Derivatives?

  
 Add to PDF   Mid 
Q12:   

How is AdaGrad used to optimize a Learning Rate?

  
 Add to PDF   Mid 
Q13:   

When Optimizing a Neural Network, how do you define the Termination Condition for Gradient Descent?

  Related To: Gradient Descent
 Add to PDF   Mid 
Q14:   

When you are Optimizing a Neural Network, does it make sense to combine both Momentum and Weight Decay to improve the performance?

  Related To: Neural Networks
 Add to PDF   Mid 
Q15:   

How does the Adam method of Stochastic Gradient Descent work?

  Related To: Gradient Descent
 Add to PDF   Mid 
Q16:   

How do you use the Convex Optimization Approach to Minimize Regret?

  
 Add to PDF   Mid 
Q17:   

What is Random Search Optimization?

  
 Add to PDF   Mid 
Q18:   

Compare Batch Gradient Descent and Stochastic Gradient Descent

  Related To: Gradient Descent
 Add to PDF   Mid 
Q19:   

Why is Newton's Method not used in Optimisation as opposed to Gradient Descent?

  
 Add to PDF   Mid 
Q20:   

How Bayesian Optimisation is used in Hyperparameter Tuning?

  
 Add to PDF   Senior 
Q21:   

Why is Newton's Method not sensitive to ill-conditioned Hessian?

  
 Add to PDF   Senior 
Q22:   

What is the Mirror Descent?

  Related To: Gradient Descent
 Add to PDF   Senior 
Q23:   

Should Training Samples Randomly Drawn for Mini-Batch Training Neural Networks be drawn with or without Replacement?

  Related To: Neural Networks
 Add to PDF   Senior 
Q24:   

For both Convex, and Non-Convex Problems, does the Gradient in SGD always point to the global extreme value?

  Related To: Gradient Descent
 Add to PDF   Senior 
Q25:   

When you are Optimizing your Neural Network, is it a good idea to Prune the Network?

  Related To: Neural Networks
 Add to PDF   Senior 
Q26:   

In what situations would you prefer Coordinate Descent over Gradient Descent?

  Related To: Gradient Descent
 Add to PDF   Senior 
Q27:   

In Random Forests, how do you optimize the Number of Trees T in the Forest?

  Related To: Random Forest
 Add to PDF   Senior 
Q28:   

In Hyperparameter Optimization, would you use Random Search or Grid Search to achieve a better performance?

  
 Add to PDF   Senior 
Q29:   

Explain in detail how Momentum-based Gradient Descent and Nesterov's Accelerated Gradient Descent work

  Related To: Gradient Descent
 Add to PDF   Senior 
Q30:   

What is the difference between Momentum based Gradient Descent and Nesterov's Accelerated Gradient Descent?

  Related To: Gradient Descent
 Add to PDF   Senior 
Q31:   

Compare using Newton's Method and Gradient Descent for Optimisation

  
 Add to PDF   Senior 
Q32:   

What does "almost all local minimum have very similar function value to the global optimum" mean?

  
 Add to PDF   Expert 
Q33:   

What is an Optimization Strategy which can be used to solve Convex Problems but is Blind to the Problem Structure?

  
 Add to PDF   Expert 
 

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