Key insights
- A user recommends "Quantitative Finance Interview Prep Guide" by Mikhail Zaitsev for improving probabilistic thinking, highlighting its focus on building intuition rather than memorizing formulas. While geared towards quant interviews, the book is praised for its general problem-solving value. This could indirectly influence market participants seeking to improve their quantitative skills.
One thing I’ve noticed after doing a lot of quant prep is that there’s a huge difference between books that teach tricks and books that genuinely improve the way you think.
For me, Quantitative Finance Interview Prep Guide by Mikhail Zaitsev (who’s a Jane Street quant) was one of the rare books in the second category. The problems are hard in a very “clean” way, they force you to build intuition for probability and combinatorics instead of pattern-matching formulas.
Ironically, despite the title, I think it’s just an excellent probability/problem-solving book in general. It actually played a pretty big role in helping me get into IMC.
Curious what other people here think are the best books for developing probabilistic thinking rather than just grinding interview questions.