Top 45 Machine Learning Interview Questions in 2025
Top 45 Machine Learning Interview Questions in 2025
Tutorials Articles Ebooks Free Practice Tests On-demand Webinars Live Webinars
Home        Resources    AI & Machine Learning    Machine Learning Tutorial: A Step-by-Step Guide for
Beginners      Top 45 Machine Learning Interview Questions in 2025
Table of Contents
Companies are striving to make information and services more accessible to people by
adopting new-age technologies like artiUcial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. One can
witness the growing adoption of these technologies in industrial sectors like banking, Unance,
retail, manufacturing, healthcare, and more.
Data scientists, artiUcial intelligence engineers, machine learning engineers, and data analysts
are some of the in-demand organizational roles that are embracing AI. If you aspire to apply
for these types of jobs, it is crucial to know the kind of machine learning interview questions
that recruiters and hiring managers may ask.
This article takes you through some of the machine learning interview questions and answers,
that you’re likely to encounter on your way to achieving your dream job.
EXPLORE PROGRAM
Let's start with some commonly asked machine learning interview questions and answers.
Supervised Learning
In unsupervised learning, we don't have labeled data. A model can identify patterns, anomalies,
and relationships in the input data.
Reinforcement Learning
Using reinforcement learning, the model can learn based on the rewards it received for its
previous action.
Consider an environment where an agent is working. The agent is given a target to achieve.
Every time the agent takes some action toward the target, it is given positive feedback. And, if
the action taken is going away from the goal, the agent is given negative feedback.
The OverUtting is a situation that occurs when a model learns the training set too well, taking
up random ductuations in the training data as concepts. These impact the model’s ability to
generalize and don’t apply to new data.
When a model is given the training data, it shows 100 percent accuracy—technically a slight
loss. But, when we use the test data, there may be an error and low efciency. This condition is
known as overUtting.
Regularization. It involves a cost term for the features involved with the objective function
Making a simple model. With lesser variables and parameters, the variance can be reduced
  If some model parameters are likely to cause overUtting, techniques for regularization like
  LASSO can be used that penalize these parameters
EXPLORE PROGRAM
3. What is ‘training Set’ and ‘test Set’ in a Machine Learning Model? How Much Data Will You
Allocate for Your Training, Validation, and Test Sets?
Consider a case where you have labeled data for 1,000 records. One way to train the model is
to expose all 1,000 records during the training process. Then you take a small set of the same
data to test the model, which would give good results in this case.
But, this is not an accurate way of testing. So, we set aside a portion of that data called the
‘test set’ before starting the training process. The remaining data is called the ‘training set’ that
we use for training the model. The training set passes through the model multiple times until
the accuracy is high, and errors are minimized.
the accuracy is high, and errors are minimized.
Now, we pass the test data to check if the model can accurately predict the values and
determine if training is effective. If you get errors, you either need to change your model or
retrain it with more data.
Regarding the question of how to split the data into a training set and test set, there is no Uxed
rule, and the ratio can vary based on individual preferences.
One of the easiest ways to handle missing or corrupted data is to drop those rows or columns
or replace them entirely with some other value.
There are two useful methods in Pandas:
IsNull() and dropna() will help to Und the columns/rows with missing data and drop them
5. How Can You Choose a ClassiVer Based on a Training Set Data Size?
When the training set is small, a model that has a right bias and low variance seems to work
better because they are less likely to overUt.
For example, Naive Bayes works best when the training set is large. Models with low bias and
high variance tend to perform better as they work Une with complex relationships.
KNOW MORE
Actual
Predicted
Here,
Total No = 3+9 = 12
Total No = 1+9 = 10
For a model to be accurate, the values across the diagonals should be high. The total sum of
all the values in the matrix equals the total observations in the test data set.
= (12+9) / 25
= 21 / 25
= 84%
7. What Is a False Positive and False Negative and How Are They SigniVcant?
False positives are those cases that wrongly get classiUed as True but are False.
False negatives are those cases that wrongly get classiUed as False but are True.
In the term ‘False Positive,’ the word ‘Positive’ refers to the ‘Yes’ row of the predicted value in
the confusion matrix. The complete term indicates that the system has predicted it as a
positive, but the actual value is negative.
So, looking at the confusion matrix, we get:
False-positive = 3
True positive = 12
Similarly, in the term ‘False Negative,’ the word ‘Negative’ refers to the ‘No’ row of the predicted
value in the confusion matrix. And the complete term indicates that the system has predicted
it as negative, but the actual value is positive.
False Negative = 1
True Negative = 9
EXPLORE PROGRAM
Model Building
Choose a suitable algorithm for the model and train it according to the requirement
   Model Testing
  Model Testing
Make the required changes after testing and use the Unal model for real-time projects
Here, it’s important to remember that once in a while, the model needs to be checked to make
sure it’s working correctly. It should be modiUed to make sure that it is up-to-date.
The Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that involves systems that think and learn
like humans using artiUcial neural networks. The term ‘deep’ comes from the fact that you can
have several layers of neural networks.
One of the primary differences between machine learning and deep learning is that feature
engineering is done manually in machine learning. In the case of deep learning, the model
consisting of neural networks will automatically determine which features to use (and which
not to use).
This is a commonly asked question asked in both Machine Learning Interviews as well as
Deep Learning Interview Questions
10. What Are the Differences Between Machine Learning and Deep Learning?
11. What Are the Applications of Supervised Machine Learning in Modern Businesses?
  Here we train the model using historical data that consists of emails categorized as spam
  or not spam. This labeled information is fed as input to the model.
Healthcare Diagnosis
Sentiment Analysis
  This refers to the process of using algorithms to mine documents and determine whether
  they’re positive, neutral, or negative in sentiment.
Fraud Detection
  By training the model to identify suspicious patterns, we can detect instances of possible
  fraud.
             EXPLORE PROGRAM
              EXPLORE PROGRAM
Supervised learning uses data that is completely labeled, whereas unsupervised learning uses
no training data.
In the case of semi-supervised learning, the training data contains a small amount of labeled
data and a large amount of unlabeled data.
There are two techniques used in unsupervised learning: clustering and association.
Clustering
Clustering problems involve data to be divided into subsets. These subsets, also called
clusters, contain data that are similar to each other. Different clusters reveal different details
about the objects, unlike classiUcation or regression.
Association
For example, an e-commerce website can suggest other items for you to buy, based on the
prior purchases that you have made, spending habits, items in your wishlist, other customers’
purchase habits, and so on.
14. What is the Difference Between Supervised and Unsupervised Machine Learning?
  Supervised learning - This model learns from the labeled data and makes a future
  prediction as output
  Unsupervised learning - This model uses unlabeled input data and allows the algorithm to
  act on that information without guidance.
15. What is the Difference Between Inductive Machine Learning and Deductive Machine
Learning?
K-means KNN
   The points in each cluster are similar to each      It classiUes an unlabeled observation
   other, and each cluster is different from its       based on its K (can be any number)
   neighboring clusters                                surrounding neighbors
The classiUer is called ‘naive’ because it makes assumptions that may or may not turn out to
be correct.
The algorithm assumes that the presence of one feature of a class is not related to the
presence of any other feature (absolute independence of features), given the class variable.
For instance, a fruit may be considered to be a cherry if it is red in color and round in shape,
regardless of other features. This assumption may or may not be right (as an apple also
matches the description).
  Advance Your Career in Machine Learning
   Previous                                                                               Next
  Machine Learning using Python
Tutorial Playlist
EXPLORE PROGRAM
18. Explain How a System Can Play a Game of Chess Using Reinforcement Learning.
Reinforcement learning has an environment and an agent. The agent performs some actions
to achieve a speciUc goal. Every time the agent performs a task that is taking it towards the
goal, it is rewarded. And, every time it takes a step that goes against that goal or in the reverse
direction, it is penalized.
Earlier, chess programs had to determine the best moves after much research on numerous
factors. Building a machine designed to play such games would require many rules to be
speciUed.
With reinforced learning, we don’t have to deal with this problem as the learning agent learns
by playing the game. It will make a move (decision), check if it’s the right move (feedback), and
keep the outcomes in memory for the next step it takes (learning). There is a reward for every
correct decision the system takes and punishment for the wrong one.
19. How Will You Know Which Machine Learning Algorithm to Choose for Your ClassiVcation
Problem?
While there is no Uxed rule to choose an algorithm for a classiUcation problem, you can follow
these guidelines:
   If the training dataset is small, use models that have low variance and high bias
  If the training dataset is large, use models that have high variance and little bias
20. How is Amazon Able to Recommend Other Things to Buy? How Does the
Recommendation Engine Work?
Once a user buys something from Amazon, Amazon stores that purchase data for future
reference and Unds products that are most likely also to be bought, it is possible because of
the Association algorithm, which can identify patterns in a given dataset.
KNOW MORE
ClassiUcation is used when your target is categorical, while regression is used when your
target variable is continuous. Both classiUcation and regression belong to the category of
supervised machine learning algorithms.
Predicting yes or no
Estimating gender
Breed of an animal
Type of color
EXPLORE PROGRAM
  The supervised machine learning algorithm will then determine which type of emails are
  being marked as spam based on spam words like the lottery, free offer, no money, full
  refund, etc.
  The next time an email is about to hit your inbox, the spam Ulter will use statistical analysis
  The next time an email is about to hit your inbox, the spam Ulter will use statistical analysis
  and algorithms like Decision Trees and SVM to determine how likely the email is spam
If the likelihood is high, it will label it as spam, and the email won’t hit your inbox
  Based on the accuracy of each model, we will use the algorithm with the highest accuracy
  after testing all the models
A ‘random forest’ is a supervised machine learning algorithm that is generally used for
classiUcation problems. It operates by constructing multiple decision trees during the training
phase. The random forest chooses the decision of the majority of the trees as the Unal
decision.
24. Considering a Long List of Machine Learning Algorithms, given a Data Set, How Do You
Decide Which One to Use?
There is no master algorithm for all situations. Choosing an algorithm depends on the
following questions:
KNOW MORE
Bias
Bias in a machine learning model occurs when the predicted values are further from the actual
values. Low bias indicates a model where the prediction values are very close to the actual
ones.
UnderUtting: High bias can cause an algorithm to miss the relevant relations between features
and target outputs.
Variance
Variance refers to the amount the target model will change when trained with different training
data. For a good model, the variance should be minimized.
OverUtting: High variance can cause an algorithm to model the random noise in the training
data rather than the intended outputs.
The bias-variance decomposition essentially decomposes the learning error from any
algorithm by adding the bias, variance, and a bit of irreducible error due to noise in the
underlying dataset.
Necessarily, if you make the model more complex and add more variables, you’ll lose bias but
gain variance. To get the optimally-reduced amount of error, you’ll have to trade off bias and
gain variance. To get the optimally-reduced amount of error, you’ll have to trade off bias and
variance. Neither high bias nor high variance is desired.
High bias and low variance algorithms train models that are consistent, but inaccurate on
average.
High variance and low bias algorithms train models that are accurate but inconsistent.
EXPLORE PROGRAM
Precision
Precision is the ratio of several events you can correctly recall to the total number of events
you recall (mix of correct and wrong recalls).
Recall
A recall is the ratio of the number of events you can recall the number of total events.
A decision tree builds classiUcation (or regression) models as a tree structure, with datasets
broken up into ever-smaller subsets while developing the decision tree, literally in a tree-like
way with branches and nodes. Decision trees can handle both categorical and numerical data.
way with branches and nodes. Decision trees can handle both categorical and numerical data.
Pruning is a technique in machine learning that reduces the size of decision trees. It reduces
the complexity of the Unal classiUer, and hence improves predictive accuracy by the reduction
of overUtting.
Top-down fashion. It will traverse nodes and trim subtrees starting at the root
Starting at the leaves, each node is replaced with its most popular class
Logistic regression is a classiUcation algorithm used to predict a binary outcome for a given
set of independent variables.
The output of logistic regression is either a 0 or 1 with a threshold value of generally 0.5. Any
value above 0.5 is considered as 1, and any point below 0.5 is considered as 0.
31. Explain the K Nearest Neighbor Algorithm.
K nearest neighbor algorithm is a classiUcation algorithm that works in a way that a new data
point is assigned to a neighboring group to which it is most similar.
In K nearest neighbors, K can be an integer greater than 1. So, for every new data point, we
want to classify, we compute to which neighboring group it is closest.
Let us classify an object using the following example. Consider there are three clusters:
Football
Basketball
Tennis ball
Let the new data point to be classiUed is a black ball. We use KNN to classify it. Assume K = 5
(initially).
When multiple classes are involved, we prefer the majority. Here the majority is with the tennis
ball, so the new data point is assigned to this cluster.
EXPLORE PROGRAM
Anyone who has used Spotify or shopped at Amazon will recognize a recommendation
system: It’s an information Ultering system that predicts what a user might want to hear or see
based on choice patterns provided by the user.
Kernel SVM is the abbreviated version of the kernel support vector machine. Kernel methods
are a class of algorithms for pattern analysis, and the most common one is the kernel SVM.
You can reduce dimensionality by combining features with feature engineering, removing
collinear features, or using algorithmic dimensionality reduction.
Now that you have gone through these machine learning interview questions, you must have
got an idea of your strengths and weaknesses in this domain.
KNOW MORE
Principal Component Analysis or PCA is a multivariate statistical technique that is used for
analyzing quantitative data. The objective of PCA is to reduce higher dimensional data to
lower dimensions, remove noise, and extract crucial information such as features and
attributes from large amounts of data.
The F1 score is a metric that combines both Precision and Recall. It is also the weighted
average of precision and recall.
F1 = 2 * (P * R) / (P + R)
The F1 score is one when both Precision and Recall scores are one.
Type I Error: Type I error occurs when the null hypothesis is true and we reject it.
Type II Error: Type II error occurs when the null hypothesis is false and we accept it.
Correlation: Correlation tells us how strongly two random variables are related to each other. It
takes values between -1 to +1.
Covariance: Covariance tells us the direction of the linear relationship between two random
variables. It can take any value between - ∞ and + ∞.
Support Vectors are data points that are nearest to the hyperplane. It induences the position
and orientation of the hyperplane. Removing the support vectors will alter the position of the
hyperplane. The support vectors help us build our support vector machine model.
Ensemble learning is a combination of the results obtained from multiple machine learning
models to increase the accuracy for improved decision-making.
Example: A Random Forest with 100 trees can provide much better results than using just one
decision tree.
  Fast-track Your Career in AI & Machine Learning!
EXPLORE PROGRAM
K-Fold Cross Validation is the most popular resampling technique that divides the whole
dataset into K sets of equal sizes.
42. What are the different methods to split a tree in a decision tree algorithm?
Variance: Splitting the nodes of a decision tree using the variance is done when the target
variable is continuous.
Information Gain: Splitting the nodes of a decision tree using Information Gain is preferred
when the target variable is categorical.
Gini Impurity: Splitting the nodes of a decision tree using Gini Impurity is followed when the
target variable is categorical.
43. How does the Support Vector Machine algorithm handle self-learning?
The SVM algorithm has a learning rate and expansion rate which takes care of self-learning.
The learning rate compensates or penalizes the hyperplanes for making all the incorrect
moves while the expansion rate handles Unding the maximum separation area between
different classes.
44. What are the assumptions you need to take before starting with linear regression?
Multivariate normality
No auto-correlation
Homoscedasticity
Linear relationship
No or little multicollinearity
Lasso(also known as L1) and Ridge(also known as L2) regression are two popular
regularization techniques that are used to avoid overUtting of data. These methods are used to
penalize the coefcients to Und the optimum solution and reduce complexity. The Lasso
regression works by penalizing the sum of the absolute values of the coefcients. In Ridge or
L2 regression, the penalty function is determined by the sum of the squares of the coefcients.
    Looking forward to a successful career in AI and Machine learning. Enrol in our Caltech
       Post Graduate Program in AI and Machine Learning in collaboration with Caltech
                                          University now.
EXPLORE PROGRAM
With technology ramping up, jobs in the Ueld of data science and AI will continue to be in
demand. Candidates who upgrade their skills and become well-versed in these emerging
technologies can Und many job opportunities with impressive salaries. Looking forward to
becoming a Machine Learning Engineer?
Apart from the above mentioned interview questions, it is also important to have a fair
understanding of frequently asked Data Science interview questions.
Considering this trend, Simplilearn offers Caltech Post Graduate Program in AI & ML
certiUcation course to help you gain a Urm hold of machine learning concepts. This course is
well-suited for those at the intermediate level, including:
  Analytics managers
Business analysts
Information architects
Facing the machine learning interview questions would become much easier after you
complete this course.
Find our Post Graduate Program in AI and Machine Learning Online Bootcamp in
top cities:
Eshna Verma
Eshna writes on PMP, PRINCE2, ITIL, ITSM, & Ethical Hacking. She has done her Masters in
Eshna writes on PMP, PRINCE2, ITIL, ITSM, & Ethical Hacking. She has done her Masters in
Jou…
View More
Recommended Programs
59181 Learners
Explore Category
Post Graduate Program In AI And Machine Learning, Ahmedabad                        Post Graduate Program
Post Graduate Program In AI And Machine Learning, Ahmedabad       Post Graduate Program
Chennai Post Graduate Program In AI And Machine Learning, Delhi Post Graduate
Program In AI And Machine Learning, Gurgaon Post Graduate Program In AI And Machine
Kolkata Post Graduate Program In AI And Machine Learning, Mumbai Post Graduate
Program In AI And Machine Learning, Noida Post Graduate Program In AI And Machine
Learning, Pune
Recommended Resources
Disclaimer
 PMP, PMI, PMBOK, CAPM, PgMP, PfMP, ACP, PBA, RMP, SP, OPM3 and the PMI ATP seal are the registered marks of the Project Management
 Institute, Inc.