Numbers for Thursday — CPAL Strategic Analytics Challenge (Senior Program Analyst)
The Setup You have just started on the analytics team at the Child Poverty Action Lab in Dallas. On your second day, this lands in your inbox. From: Marisol Reyes, Chief of Programs Subject: numbers for ThursdayHi,I'm sitting down with a…
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What You'll Be Doing
The Setup
You have just started on the analytics team at the Child Poverty Action Lab in Dallas. On your second day, this lands in your inbox.
From: Marisol Reyes, Chief of Programs Subject: numbers for ThursdayHi,I'm sitting down with a reporter from the Dallas Morning News on Thursday to talk about child poverty in Dallas County. She's asking for specifics and I want to be ready.Two things I need to be able to say: — how many kids in Dallas County are living in poverty — what are the top 5 census tractsOur data team pulled a file for me. I've attached it but honestly I don't really know what I'm looking at. Can you take a look and tell me what I can say? Remember, I'm going to be quoted, so I need to be accurate but also need to provide appropriate caveats.Thanks, Marisol
The file: dallas_county_child_poverty_tracts.xlsx — download it before you start. This is a raw internal pull. It has not been reviewed or cleaned. Treat it the way you would treat any file handed to you by a colleague on a deadline. There is a data dictionary on the second tab.
A note on the time budget. You have less time than the question deserves. That is deliberate — it is what the job is like. Deciding what to chase and what to leave is part of what we are assessing. We would rather see three decisions made and defended than a complete audit with none of them visible.
Constraints
- The attached file is your only data source. No external pulls, no supplementary downloads, no Census API. Whatever the file does not contain, you reason about and say so.
- Marisol is unreachable before Thursday. If something in the file or the request is unclear, that is useful information for us — tell us what you decided and move on rather than asking for guidance. A list of clarifying questions is not a deliverable.
- She is going to be quoted by name in a newspaper. Accuracy is not the only bar. A number that is technically defensible but invites a printed correction has failed.
- No chart is required. Do not build one. If a visual is genuinely the clearest way to make one point, describe it in a sentence instead.
- She asked for two numbers. She needs more than two numbers. Those are not the same thing.
AI Usage Guidance
Use it. CPAL's team uses AI every day and the role expects it. Do not rely on it alone — you still have to be able to defend your work.
We evaluate how you use AI, not whether you use it. Evidence of iteration, redirection, and critical evaluation scores higher than a polished output with no process documentation.
The single highest-signal indicator is your video answer to the mandatory AI question. If you cannot name a specific moment where you redirected AI output, evaluators will assume you did not.
Mandatory AI question for your video: Walk me through one moment where you disagreed with, pushed back on, or redirected what the AI gave you — and what you did instead. Name the specific moment. Explain what the AI produced that didn't meet the bar, what you did differently, and why.
One note on the AI log: keep it as a short separate block at the end of your submission — three or four lines on where you used AI and where you did not take what it gave you. Do not put it inside the email to Marisol. She does not need it, and the email should read like something you would actually send her.
Speak naturally. Communication is assessed on the clarity of your reasoning and your ability to make a technical result usable by a non-technical decision-maker — not on verbal polish, accent, pace, or filler words.
Submission
Upload each deliverable as a separate file directly on the Provn platform: your email to Marisol, your code, and your video walkthrough. No ZIP files, no repository links, no third-party video platforms.
What You'll Accomplish
Interrogate an unreviewed data file before building on it, and quantify what the problems you find actually change.
Show judgment about what a decision-maker needs versus what she asked for.
Communicate a quantitative result to a non-technical colleague who is about to be quoted, leading with the answer and attaching the caveat that matters.
Exercise scope discipline under a hard time budget, and make the cuts visible and defensible.
Direct AI tools fluently in analytical work, including catching where they are confidently wrong.
Demonstrate awareness of what is at stake for the families behind the number when it is stated publicly.
How Your Work Will Be Scored
What to Submit
Your email to Marisol
Format: .pdf, .doc, .docx, .rtf, .txt, .md
Write the actual email, in non-technical language. She is not an analyst. Keep it short — bullets are fine.
Include at minimum:
- The number. How many children in Dallas County are living in poverty?
- The top 5 tracts.
- What you found in the data that you had to deal with before you could answer. Not a full QC log. What did you find, and what did you decide?
- What else you would give her. She asked for two numbers. What else would you put in front of her before she talks to a reporter? Go beyond the literal ask.
- What you would have done with another day, and what you decided to skip. Two or three lines.
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Your code
Format: no restrictions
R or Python, a script or a notebook — whatever you would actually write. It does not need to be pretty. We should be able to follow it and reproduce your numbers. We are reading it for how you checked your work, not for style.
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Video walkthrough
Format: .mp4, .mov, .webm
This is where most of the assessment happens, so use the time. Five prompts:
- The answer (60–75 seconds). State the number and the one caveat you would attach to it — out loud, in the words you would want Marisol to use with the reporter.
- How you got there (about 3 minutes). Walk us through the file and your path through it. What did you find, what did you decide, and what would you defend if we pushed on it?
- The call you had to make (about 90 seconds). Name the judgment call in this exercise that you are least certain about. Tell us which way you went and why — and what would have to be true for the other choice to be the better one.
- The mandatory AI question (60–90 seconds). Answer the question set out verbatim in the AI Usage Guidance above.
- What you learned, and what is at stake (60–90 seconds). One thing this exercise taught you or changed your mind about. Then: what happens to the families living in these tracts if this number goes out wrong, and what would you want to know about how CPAL uses a number like this one?
Speak naturally — we assess the clarity of your reasoning, not your delivery.
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