Summary

This is a job application project. Our aim is that it won't take too much of your time, while still allowing you to demonstrate how great you are.

Your goal

Your goal is to make the tests in this project pass. You can do this by writing code in titanic.py to read a CSV and produce some summary values from it.

We've written test cases to check these values, but since you haven't written any code yet, those tests are failing. Once all the tests are passing, you're done.

You can run the test suite by running pytest once your dependencies are installed (see below).

Getting set up

You’ll need Python 3 on your system. Create a virtual environment, activate it and install the dependencies like so:

python3 -m venv env
source env/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements

If you already know what you’re doing and have a different approach (poetry, pyenv, ...) to the above, do what works best for you.

You can now check your setup is OK by running pytest. You should see some failing tests, which is expected until you’ve written the code to make them pass. If pytest fails to run any tests, it’s not quite working yet.

Getting the work back to us

Use one or more commits to record your work as though this were a real project. Push it up to somewhere you can link us (e.g. GitHub, GitLab, ...), or you can make a tarball of the project and email that over instead. Inventive technical alternatives to delivering the code will be looked upon favourably.

Different skill levels

If you're new to Python and we've linked you here, do your best and we'll take it into account. If you know what a particular function needs to do but can't spell it in Python, write what you're thinking in a comment instead.

On the other hand if you've been doing this a while and find this all a bit easy, we've included some optional stretch goals (or you can make up your own).

FAQ

Are there any rules?

You can’t change the existing test assertions. You can make changes to the way the tests call your functions if you want to arrange things differently.
You need to do the work yourself. Referring to docs or StackOverflow is fine.
You can’t hard-code the results; they need to be calculated from titanic.csv.

How about style and formatting?

We’ve included black and flake8 in the requirements because this is how LivePreso projects look. If you don’t know what these are or prefer an alternative, that’s fine. We will be looking at readability, not convention.

What can I change in titanic.py?

We’ve included some stub definitions in this file so it’s clear how to get started, but you are free to remove those and start again if you prefer. As long as the tests still pass, you’re good.

You can make changes to the way the tests call your functions if you want to arrange things differently.

Can I use a library?

Yes. Approach this question like you’re doing regular work. We’re not trying to get you to write a particular algorithm here -- any genuine solution is OK. If there is an existing package on PyPI or in the standard library which improves your code please feel free to use it.

What’s part of the test, and what’s ignored?

We’ll be looking at:

Your approach to the problem
Whether it works :)
Code readability -- we like brief, clear and unsurprising code.
Comments explaining “why” as necessary. Avoid comments explaining what the code already says.
Logic and/or syntax errors
Appropriate data structures, if used
Appropriate algorithms, if used
How you organised and wrote your commits

Stretch goals

If you feel this test didn’t really stretch your legs, here are some ideas for you:

Use Hypothesis to test any invariants in your code.
Add type annotations
Run the tests with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI or equivalent.
Find which passenger attributes correlate best with survival.
Analyse the performance of your code.
Do something totally unrelated but cool.

We recognise having to do a different technical test for each job you apply for is an imposition on your time, so these are strictly optional.

NervosaX / backend-test