cswork / libraryOpen practice workspace

Interview questions · Instacart

Compute immediate delivery percentage

This interview question evaluates algorithm design, data structures, correctness, complexity, edge cases, and implementation details in a realistic interview setting. A strong answer for Compute immediate delivery percentage states assumptions, handles edge cases, explains trade-offs, and shows how to validate the result clearly.

LeetCode 1173. Immediate Food Delivery I – Write an SQL query to calculate the percentage of immediate (same-day) orders, rounded to two decimals. Follow-up (LeetCode 1174. Immediate Food Delivery II) – Extend the query to compute the percentage of immediate first-ever orders for each customer.

https://leetcode.com/problems/immediate-food-delivery-i/description/ https://leetcode.com/problems/immediate-food-delivery-ii/description/

What a Strong Answer Covers

  • A clear algorithm with the right data structures and enough pseudocode or code-level detail to implement it.
  • A correctness argument that explains why the algorithm covers all required cases.
  • Time and space complexity, plus at least one alternative approach when relevant.
  • Focused tests for normal cases, edge cases, and failure modes.

Follow-up Questions

  • How would the approach change if the input were streaming or too large for memory?
  • What invariants would you assert in production code?
  • Which tests would catch off-by-one, duplicate, or tie-breaking bugs?

Solution

Solution Alignment

The prompt asks for an implementation-level answer. The safest way to present it is to define the state, maintain clear invariants, then walk through complexity and tests.

Problem Restatement

Question LeetCode 1173. Immediate Food Delivery I – Write an SQL query to calculate the percentage of immediate (same-day) orders, rounded to two decimals. Follow-up (LeetCode 1174. Immediate Food Delivery II) – Extend the query to compute the percentage of immediate first-ever orders for each customer. https://leetcode.com/problems/immediate-food-delivery-i/description/ https://leetcode.com/problems/immediate-food-delivery-ii/description/

Recommended Approach

Start with a brute-force baseline to confirm correctness, then identify the repeated work or ordering property that enables a better data structure such as a hash map, heap, stack, queue, two pointers, prefix sums, BFS/DFS, or dynamic programming. Write the implementation around a small invariant and test that invariant directly.

Correctness

The implementation should maintain an invariant after each loop or operation that directly matches the problem statement. At termination, that invariant implies the returned value has considered every valid candidate exactly once, or has preserved the required data-structure state after every API call.

Complexity

State the baseline complexity and the optimized complexity. For most interview constraints, justify why the optimized approach meets the expected input size.

Edge Cases and Tests

Empty and singleton inputs, duplicates, ties, invalid inputs, boundary values, and tests that exercise the main invariant.

Community answers

Nothing here yet.

Join in on CSWork →