Knowing your way around some tricky mathematical conundrums is essential when applying for jobs at hedge funds. Hedge fund Millennium has released a new brainteaser of its own via social media, and senior mathematicians in the industry seem to think the answer should be common knowledge.
The question can be read below:
One Goldman Sachs analyst described this as a “classic Math Olympiad” question. Credit Suisse alum and Morningstar DBRS executive Chen Zou solved the puzzle in her “relax time” said, “my daughter in middle school can understand my solution.”
Think you know it? Tell us your answer in the comments. (No peeking at the solution below 😡)
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The answer, as revealed by Millennium, was 3^2025. There are a number of ways respondents were able to reach that.
One of the briefer answers comes from Goldman Sachs engineering apprentice Jabir Haque. He said that if T(n) is equal to 3n digits, then the largest power of three that divides it is 3^(n+1). Thus, with 2024 digits, the answer is 3^2025.
PhD physicist Aneesh Sivasankaran took a slightly different and approach. He would divide by three, then “just group three of the results to divide by three again.” He found that 3^(answer-1) was equal to the number of digits.
If math isn’t your strong suit (like myself), don’t expect AI chatbots to help you too much with questions like these. Bard gave an answer of 2024 (which a minority of respondents gave also), while ChatGPT said the answer was 27. 😬
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