Friends, Fun, and a Faceoff at the Estimathon
by Lim Jye Ern Javen, Lim Ming Kai Kayden
The Estimathon Activity is brought to us by Jane Street, a quantitative trading firm and liquidity provider with a unique focus on technology and collaborative problem solving.
This summer, Jane Street Hong Kong is excited to host their WiSE program for pre-collegiate female students in July 2026. Participants will have the chance to meet some of their traders and technologists and learn how they transitioned from studying STEM subjects to careers at Jane Street. Interested students can apply by 31 May 2026 (Sunday), via https://www.janestreet.com/apply-wise-hkg/.
Let the games begin! Right before heading off for the Estimathon activity, interviewees from Germany’s Aloisiuskolleg summarised their emotions as mostly excitement, with a sprinkle of nervousness. Nonetheless, they remained relatively confident about their performance for the next few days.
It was soon time for the first competitive segment of the day. The task was to estimate values with accuracy and precision. Contestants puzzled over the upper and lower bounds of values ranging from the all-time peak of concurrent players in Among Us, to the total number of zeroes multiplied by ones when you write out all whole numbers from one to 2026 (albeit in binary). All they had were pens, paper, thirty minutes, and one another.
As the teams prepared for the questions ahead, fervent debates could be heard from across the room. Gradually, participants began submitting their answer slips to the organisers, with their responses reflected on the scoreboard on the screen. The problems were designed to be “firm-y”, reflecting actual interview questions in Jane Street interviews. To our surprise, a lot of wrong answers were reflected at first, showing the difficulty and technical skill required to solve these problems.
The rankings flipped around more often than we could count. With twelve minutes left on the clock, Team 7 had made a sudden misstep. “We put in a very big max[imum bound] over min[imum bound], at what cost?” lamented a team member.
Right as the live scoreboard shut off with two minutes left on the clock, Team 12 was in the lead. By then, they had already entered all their guesses. Awaiting the final results, a team member from NUS High acknowledged that he was “stressed, [yet had] nothing left to do [but to] pray for the best”.
When asked about whether they saw themselves retaining their lead, another member from Italy’s H-FARM International School conceded, “We might or might not”. “We just based [our strategy] off of common sense,” explained a teammate from Vietnam’s HUS High School for Gifted Students.
The answers came as a bit of a shock. The room saw puzzled looks abound and quiet exclamations of “What??”. After accounting for the final few submissions and tabulating the final scores, Team 10 came out on top!
Competitors were in high spirits, having forged stronger bonds with their newfound friends. As a member of Team 5 put it, “I was a little disappointed because most of my estimations were false, but it was still a very fun experience.” This embodied the goal of this activity perfectly, and as stated by the organisers, the point of this activity was to “get everyone talking to each other, working in a team, and having a bit of fun answering maths questions”.