Daily Top Users

Microsoft: Find the top 5 users by daily activity in a three-day telemetry export.

Assignment

The product analytics team has exported three days of user activity from the telemetry system, and wants a quick analysis before the numbers go to the engagement report.

Note: Telemetry is usage data that a product records automatically while people use it — each time a user takes an action, the system logs it. Nobody types these records in by hand; they come straight from the product, which is why an export like this can contain gaps or oddities that were never reviewed by a person.

Deliverables

• The data prepared so that records with missing values are handled correctly.
• The top 5 users by total activity (actions) for each day.
• A short closing report of your findings for the product analytics team, including anything they should double-check before relying on the numbers.

Data Description

microsoft_user_activity.csv has one row per user per day:

• user_id
• user_name
• activity_date
• actions - number of actions the user took that day
• minutes_active - minutes the user was active that day

Practicalities

You can solve this in Python, SQL, or a mix of both — StrataScratch notebooks support both languages in the same notebook.

Assume this data comes directly from the telemetry system and hasn't been cleaned, so review it carefully before relying on the numbers. When something looks off, work out what it is and decide how to handle it; when a definition or a final decision is genuinely ambiguous, choose a reasonable option and explain why. There's often more than one valid way to compute a result, so explain the approach you take and the reasoning behind your choices.

What's assessed: your results, and how clearly you explain what you see in the data and justify the choices you make.