# Are questions in Joshi's book really asked at Quant interviews? [closed]

I am reading some questions in Joshi's book on Quant Job Interview Questions, and am perplexed at some of the questions in the book.

Some of them are extremely easy (like, "explain the Black Scholes equation" or "write C++ code to compute Fibonacci numbers" or "why can't t you sort an array of length N in O(n)-time"). I could do this in my sleep.

But then there are these weirdo questions that require Stirling's approximation or knowing a power series expansion of $$\sin x$$. I mean, I know what's going on and I understand the solution to the questions totally, but ... I don't walk around with the power series expansion of $$\sin x$$ in my head, sorry I just don't.

There's even a question about contour integration (CONTOUR INTEGRATION!) in there. Here's the solution taken from the book:

WTF? Are you supposed to give this solution on a whiteboard at a job interview?

Are such questions actually asked? Why?

## closed as primarily opinion-based by skoestlmeier, byouness, Attack68♦Jun 19 at 5:53

Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.

• Interviews are as creative as the interviewer wants to assess your merits. Taking the approach that the questions should fall only within a purview of your own determination is not sensible. It is entirely possible that they are testing skills because based on their experience of relevant tasks. Indeed testing someone on new problems of unfamiliarity is one of the most useful. I don't care you can read a book and repeat, I might care you can assess something new and leverage your existing knowledge in an innovative way. – Attack68 Jun 15 at 16:08