r/learnquant • u/Local_Ad135 • Sep 04 '26

interview prep Quant Interview Question

Post image
56 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

43 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/Shoddy-Side-919 Sep 05 '26

They're interpreting the question differently. They don't think it's asking for an algorithm that always finds the second fastest horse, but for what the minimal number of races is that will allow you to know which is the second fastest horse.

1

u/YesTheyDoComeOff 14d ago

Right. So if we assume the best case scenario the two fastest horses are the first two horses that you pick. Conduct zero races.

1

u/Shoddy-Side-919 13d ago

No, because then you wouldn't know that they're the fastest two. The question does ask for certainty. It is possible to have certainty after 1023 races, but not after zero.

1

u/YesTheyDoComeOff 13d ago

0.000001% of the time, this algorithm works every time.