Day 26-30: Final Review & Mental Prep

Executive Summary: The Final Sprint

The goal of the final days is Consolidation, not new learning.

Day	Goal	Activity
26-27	Final Review	Re-read "High Priority" files (Supervised, System Design)
28	Code Refresh	Solve 2-3 medium ML-coding problems
29	Mock Interview	Practice articulating your projects out loud
30	Relax	Mental check and logistics verification

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1. The "Cheat Sheet" of Cheat Sheets

Before the interview, make sure you know these cold:

• Metrics: Precision/Recall trade-off, AUC, F1.

• Regularization: L1 vs L2 (Lasso creates sparsity).

• Gradient Descent: How learning rate affects convergence.

• System Design: Retrieval $\rightarrow$ Ranking pattern.

• Overfitting: Increasing data, Regularization, Dropout, Early Stopping.

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2. Final Mental Strategy

The "I don't know" Scenario

In an interview, if you don't know a specific algorithm or paper name: Don't panic.

• The Google Way: Think from first principles. "I haven't used model X, but based on the problem description, I would approach it using [Similar concept] because..."

Clear Communication

Draw diagrams if using a whiteboard (or virtual whiteboard). Label your axes. Show the flow of data. The interviewer is your collaborator, not your examiner.

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3. Readiness Checklist

• [] Can I explain my 2 most important projects in < 3 minutes?

• [] Do I have 3 questions ready for the interviewer?

• [] Have I reviewed the math for the algorithms I used in past projects?

• [] Is my setup (Webcam, Mic, Internet) rock solid?

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Good Luck!

You've put in 30 days of high-quality work. Trust your foundations. The interview is just a conversation between two engineers solving a problem together.

You've got this!