PRACTICE GUIDE SIG
SIG Problem-solving Assessment Practice
The SIG problem-solving assessment screen is 17 questions in 60 minutes - about 3.5 minutes each - answered by typing the number, with no calculator. There is no negative marking, so leaving an item blank gains you nothing over guessing.
Where it sits: First round, before the phone screen. The practice sitting on this page runs the same item count, the same clock and the same marking rule, with questions generated by Outcry rather than taken from Susquehanna (SIG).
Candidates report probability brain teasers and betting games throughout - the firm's poker culture shows up in how questions get asked.
Outcry is not affiliated with Susquehanna (SIG) and has no access to their assessment content. This guide describes an assessment format that candidates report publicly; the questions here are generated by Outcry and are not Susquehanna (SIG)’s own.
What it screens
A global quantitative trading firm famous for teaching decision-making through poker.
- ✓Expected value computed fast and used to make a decision
- ✓Conditional probability and Bayes updates without formal notation
- ✓Ranking likelihoods rather than computing them exactly
- ✓Fermi estimation: decomposing an impossible question into three easy ones
Where it sits at Susquehanna (SIG)
This is the whole sitting rather than one section of it: 17 items in 60 minutes, on one clock.
There is no going back. You answer or skip, and the next item loads, which means the decision to leave an item is final at the moment you make it.
The format
These are the numbers the SIG sitting on this site runs on, matching the format candidates report.
| Questions | 17 |
|---|---|
| Time | 60 minutes |
| Per question | 3.5 minutes |
| Negative marking | No |
| Answer style | Typed numeric answer, no calculator |
| Where it sits | First round, before the phone screen |
What it tests, with a worked example
Every example below is generated by Outcry, drawn from the same question generators the timed drills run. None of them is Susquehanna (SIG)’s.
Expected value and odds
Pricing a bet, converting between odds and probabilities, and deciding whether to take it.
Example
A market quotes odds of 2-to-3 against an event. What is the implied probability?
- 150%
- 60%
- 66.7%
- 40%
Answer 60%
Odds of 2-to-3 against means 3 favourable out of 5 total: 3/5 = 60%.
Counting and combinatorics
Arrangements, selections and the complement trick that turns a hard count into an easy one.
Example
A desk shows 5 quotes, each hit independently with probability 50%. What is the probability that exactly 2 of them are hit? Answer as a percentage.
Answer 31.3
Binomial: C(5,2) x 0.5^2 x 0.5^3 = 10 x 0.25 x 0.125 = 31.3%. The C(5,2) counts which quotes were the ones hit.
Ranking outcomes
Ordering several events by likelihood, where only the exact order scores.
Example
Stock Price DELTA $163.83 HOTEL $256.42 ECHO $205.67 CEDAR $24.18
The index above is price weighted with a divisor of 1.6253. CEDAR does a 5-for-1 split, so its price goes from $24.18 to $4.84. What is the new divisor?
Answer 1.5769
The index level cannot jump on a corporate action, because nobody's wealth changed. Before: the prices sum to $650.10 and the level is $650.10 / 1.6253 = 399.9877. After: the prices sum to $630.76. Set the new divisor so the level is unchanged: D_new = $630.76 / 399.9877 = 1.576949. Equivalently D_new = D_old x (new sum / old sum) = 1.6253 x 0.970251. Leaving the divisor alone would print a level of 388.0884, a move of -2.975% that no holder experienced. This is exactly how the Dow divisor drifted from 1 to well under 0.2.
Waiting times and repeated trials
How long until the first success, and why the answer is rarely the average you expected.
Example 1
What is the area under y = 1/x between x = 3 and x = 12?
Answer 1.39
The integral is ln(12/3) = ln 4 ≈ 1.39. Anchors worth knowing: ln 2 = 0.69, ln 3 = 1.10, ln 10 = 2.30.
Example 2
A fair coin is flipped 40,000 times. Give the number of heads at the TOP of the central 95% range. Nearest integer.
Answer 20196
The count has mean 20,000 and standard deviation √40,000/2 = 100. Two of those above the mean: 20,000 + 2 × 100 = 20,200.
Example 3
An index rises 2.3% on 5 days and falls 2.3% on 5 other days. What is the net change over the 10 days, as a percentage?
Answer -0.26
Each up-down pair multiplies to 1 − 2.3%² = 1 − 0.05%. With 5 pairs the drag is about −5 × 0.05% = -0.26%.
Symmetry arguments
Questions that collapse to one line once you notice the two cases are mirror images.
Example
A quote is hit with probability 5% each second, independently. How many seconds on average until the first hit?
Answer 20
The mean wait for an event of probability 0.05 is 1/0.05 = 20 seconds.
Reading the question exactly
At least, exactly, and given that - the three phrases that change the answer entirely.
Example
In a single queue, one candidate is 9th from the front and 15th from the back. How many people are in the queue?
- 23
- 24
- 15
- 22
Answer 23
Counting from both ends counts that one candidate twice: 9 + 15 - 1 = 23.
What a good score looks like
On a paper of 17 questions with no penalty for a wrong answer, the only thing an unanswered question can do is cost you. Probability rounds are usually marked as part of a wider battery, so a standalone threshold is rarely reported. Where candidates do describe one it clusters around getting two thirds of the items right, with the caveat that these sections are short enough that two mistakes move you a long way.
How to train for it
- 01Work the standard results until they are recall, not derivation: complement, conditional, binomial mean and variance, geometric expectation.
- 02Practise setting up before calculating. Most wrong answers on these are a correct calculation of the wrong quantity.
- 03Sanity-check the magnitude before committing. A probability above one or an expectation outside the range of outcomes is a caught error, and these papers plant both as options.
TRAIN IT HERE
The drills that match each section
Likelihood Ranking
Order events from most to least likely - the exact screen-question format.
Fermi Estimation
Piano tuners in Chicago, atoms in a body - scored on order of magnitude.
Quitters Never Lose
A casino stopping-strategy game that is secretly a martingale lesson.
Tail Risk
Rare events and fat tails, and what they do to a plain expected-value estimate.
SIT THE FULL BATTERY
All the sections back to back on one clock, marked the way the real screen marks them, with a by-skill breakdown at the end. Included with any pass.
Also reported at Susquehanna (SIG)
Common questions
- Is the SIG problem-solving assessment test multiple choice?
- Typed numeric answer, no calculator. You type the number, so there is nothing to eliminate your way to.
- How long is the SIG problem-solving assessment test?
- 17 questions in 60 minutes, which is about 3.5 minutes each.
- Is there negative marking on the SIG problem-solving assessment test?
- No. A wrong answer costs nothing beyond the mark you would have earned, so leaving an item blank is never better than guessing at it.
- How do I practise for it free?
- Every drill linked on this page is free to play, with no account, inside a daily run cap. Questions are generated fresh each run, so there is nothing to memorise between attempts. The full SIG Problem-Solving Assessment sitting puts the sections back to back on one clock.