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Practice · Quant prep · Timed test

Timed quant papers

Interview papers that start easy and end hard, the way a technical round escalates, or thirty-question rounds on one topic. One question at a time against the clock, then your score and every worked solution.

Applying to trading firms? The Quant Careers Report: what 13 firms test and pay, and when they hire. £79.

Interview papers

Firm-style rounds

Each follows the topics that firm says it tests; the Jane Street, Optiver, Citadel, IMC, Five Rings, Two Sigma, D. E. Shaw, DRW, Hudson River Trading, SIG, G-Research and Flow Traders pages explain what the firm publishes about its process. The questions are ours.

Topic rounds

Opens in its own window, so the site stays where it is. Runs like a firm's online assessment: one overall timer, one question at a time, no going back. Numeric answers accept fractions (1/3) or decimals. Enter submits.

PDF · Edition 2 · £79

The Quant Careers Report

A timed paper shows how fast you are. The report shows where to point it: how 13 firms interview, the pay they state, and when each programme takes applications.

Buy the report — £79 See what is inside

What this test contains

Interview papers that start easy and end hard, the way a technical round escalates, or thirty-question rounds on one topic. One question at a time against the clock, then your score and every worked solution.

Probability

Expected value, conditioning, random walks, order statistics and the classic puzzles.

147 questions · 30 questions · 90s each →

Brainteasers

Counting, pigeonhole, weighing and logic puzzles, with the short argument that cracks each.

114 questions · 30 questions · 75s each →

Stochastic calculus

Brownian motion, Itô’s lemma, martingales, Girsanov and Black–Scholes.

38 questions · 30 questions · 75s each →

Stochastic differential equations

Geometric Brownian motion, Ornstein–Uhlenbeck and CIR, hitting times, Fokker–Planck, simulation schemes and Girsanov.

50 questions · 25 questions · 90s each →

Statistics & machine learning

Regression, regularisation, classification metrics, estimation and backtest pitfalls.

43 questions · 30 questions · 60s each →

Expected value & market making

Fair value, betting and Kelly, options intuition and quoting against informed flow.

42 questions · 30 questions · 75s each →

Mental arithmetic

The fast, exact arithmetic trading interviews test under time pressure.

66 questions · 30 questions · 15s each →

Three questions from this test

Taken from the banks above, with the worked answers, so you can see the level before you start the clock.

1 Easy Type asked at
A fair coin is tossed three times. What is the probability of at least one head?
Show answer
Answer: 78\tfrac78
The complement is three tails, probability 18\tfrac18. So 1−18=781-\tfrac18=\tfrac78.
20 Medium Type asked atFive Rings
Writing out the integers from 1 to 100, how many times do you write the digit 7?
Show answer
Answer: 2020
Ten times in the units place (7, 17, …, 97) and ten in the tens place (70–79).
34 Medium Type asked at
dX=0.5 dt+dWdX=0.5\,dt+dW with X0=0X_0=0. What is the expected time for XX to first reach +2+2?
Show answer
Answer: 2/0.5=42/0.5=4
Xt−0.5tX_t-0.5t is a martingale and the hitting time TT is finite with finite mean because of the upward drift. Optional stopping gives E[XT]−0.5 E[T]=0\mathbb E[X_T]-0.5\,\mathbb E[T]=0, and XT=2X_T=2, so E[T]=4\mathbb E[T]=4. With zero drift the level is still reached with probability 1 but the expected time is infinite.

How it is scored

Every question is marked right or wrong as you go; there is no partial credit, exactly as in the real thing. At the end you get your score, the time you used against the time allowed, your average per question and your longest run of correct answers. Every question then comes back with your answer, the correct one and a full worked solution.

Browse every question with its worked solution on the Quant interview prep page. Preparing for the real thing? Quant interview preparation.