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Numbers for Thursday — CPAL Strategic Analytics Challenge (Senior Strategy Data Scientist)
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 Thursday Hi, 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 tracts Our 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.
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 Thursday Hi, 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 tracts Our 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.