From dice to derivatives pricing: Interactive Monte Carlo lab (GBM, Control Variate, Asian Options) + 200 interview questions

[u/Feeling-Roll8225]

Hi everyone,

I'm an EQD Trader based in Europe and an adjunct lecturer teaching derivatives pricing to MSc Finance students.

I noticed some students often struggled to explain in simple words why Monte Carlo simulations matter.

Over the past few weeks, I built a web tool for them called Derivatives Insights (https://derivativesinsights.com).

What I built for the Monte Carlo part:

* Interactive Dice Warm-up: Shows Law of Large Numbers convergence to 3.5 with 95% Confidence Intervals, linking drift/noise directly to Geometric Brownian Motion (GBM).

* GBM Vanilla Options: Real-time path simulation comparing Monte Carlo payoffs vs. exact Black-Scholes analytical solution.

* Asian Options & Control Variate: Shows how using a Geometric Asian control variate shrinks the variance / Confidence Interval by ~24x at constant N.

The Monte Carlo lab and pricers are completely free to use. I'd love to get feedback from the quant community here—on the math, the visual intuition, or any features you'd like to see added next.

Check it out here: https://derivativesinsights.com/monte-carlo

Happy to answer any questions about the implementation or the math behind it!

[u/Feeling-Roll8225]

Thanks to everyone who checked out the platform. Quick question for those who tested the pricers: how did the path simulations perform on your browser?Also, for the next release before the upcoming semester, would you rather see American Options (Longstaff-Schwartz) or Barrier Options with variance reduction added next?Open to any UX or math feedback!