This lecture provides an overview of the course materials, topics and goals, and information on my background and how I developed this course.
This document provides a brief overview of the math skills typically assessed in management consulting case interviews. This document is intended for people who are beginning to learn about the case interview format. If you are familiar with case interviews, or if you have done a few mock case interviews, you can likely skip reading this document.
This lecture provides an overview of FastMath, which are techniques for fast and efficient calculations without using a calculator. It covers the basic principles behind FastMath and includes a sample problem to illustrate these principles.
This document provides a review of, and practice problems for foundation math operations like how to multiply and divide numbers by 10, how to multiply and divide by powers of 10 (e.g. 100, 1000), exponents, the definition of percentages, the definition of percentage growth and CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate). If you are comfortable performing these operations quickly, and fluidly, you should skip this lecture. If not, you should read this document, as knowledge of these operations is required for the rest of the material in the course.
Introductory lecture on multiplication. If you have a very strong quantitative background (e.g. degree in Physics, Mathematics or Engineering), this first section may be review for you, and you may want to skip ahead to the section on percentages and percentage growth.
Division & Factoring - Part I
Division & Factoring - Part II
These lesson consists of mental-math exercises which are designed to be practiced on a regular basis in order to improve your mental math skills. They are a good way to learn the specific "math facts" which I recommend learning at other points in the course. They are also a good way to practice the foundational math skills of multiplying by 2 and by 5.
This document shows efficient methods for calculating percentages of different numbers, and includes practice problems.
Percentages & Compound Growth - Part I
Percentages & Compound Growth - Part II
Percentages & Compound Growth - Part III
This document contains important tables from the FastMath lectures which are available in a downloadable PDF file.
To save the file, move your mouse to the lower right portion of the viewing pane, and click on the save icon (floppy disk).
Overview of Quantitative Case Problems
Break-even Analysis - Problem I
This lecture covers common examples of "Profitability Analysis" questions given in case interviews, a simple framework for calculating profitability, as well as the most efficient methods to perform these calculations. The lecture shows several solution methods for the same problems starting with "less" efficient solutions and progressing to "more" efficient solution methods.
Break-even Analysis - Problem II
This lecture covers methodologies for performing a market sizing or estimation calculation. It also includes essential data (in a downloadable format) you need in order to effectively perform market sizing calculations.
Market Sizing - Example I
Market Sizing - Example II
Market Sizing & Estimation Recommendations
This lesson contains another Chart Reading example. It also covers another very important concept - but if I describe it further, it will distract from the learning experience.
I highly recommend this lesson as it will help improve the speed of your calculations for a certain type of calculation which is very frequent.
This lesson provides an overview of Net Present Value (NPV), which is a method to assign a value to payments which will occur in the future. This material is typically covered in introductory Finance or Economics courses, so this lesson will be most useful for people who have not taken these courses, or people who want a review of the NPV.
The NPV is relevant to consulting interviews because you often need to evaluate an investment projects based on cash flows which will occur in the future, and need to value them using the NPV method.
This lesson covers how to calculate the NPV of a Perpetuity, which is an annual (or regular) payment which lasts forever ("in Perpetuity"). This method is used to determine the value of a firm which has constant annual profits, or an investment project which has constant profit, or constant cost savings which will last indefinitely.
This lecture covers how to approximate the doubling time with Constant Growth, which is very useful for calculating the NPV of single payments in the future.
This lesson teaches methods for more accurate compound growth calculations, which is required on the McKinsey PST, and may be useful in Consulting or Finance interviews. These methods are useful when you require a higher level of accuracy than provided by the non-compounding approximation (i.e. summing the percentage change in each period). These methods will also be very useful for actually doing compound growth calculations outside the context of job interviews.
This lesson covers how to find the value of Perpetuities which grow at a constant rate. A very common situation where this is required is when you are valuing a firm has annual profits which are growing at a constant rate.
Perpetuities with Growth are more commonly encountered in Finance interviews, and interviews at consulting firms or with consulting practices with a focus on Finance, such as firms/practices that specializes in Accounting, in advising Private Equity firms, Investment Banks or Corporate Finance departments.
If you aren't interviewing with one of these firms/practices, I would recommend watching this lesson and the next lesson after completing the other material in the course.
This lesson covers how to very quickly calculate the change in NPV of a Perpetuity (i.e. a firm), based on changes to the Growth Rate or the Discount Rate. This is an advanced topic that is more relevant to Finance oriented interviews, and hence may not be relevant to the majority of case interviews. I think it is very useful for business calculations as there is usually uncertainty around what the Growth Rate and Discount Rate will be, so it is natural to ask what impact do changes in these quantities (Growth & Discount Rate) have on the NPV. I recorded the video so I decided to make it available - hopefully some of you will find it useful.
You need to thoroughly understand the material in the Inverse Proportion lesson to get the most benefit out of this lesson, so you should review the Inverse Proportion lesson if you don't fully recall all the concepts from that lesson.
This is the most challenging quantitative problem which I have seen in a consulting interview. It is from a first round McKinsey interview.
This lesson contains an Algebraic solution to the Pipeline Analysis problem, which provides a formula for the answer in terms of the relevant parameters or variables. This Algebraic solution is used to solve the different variations of the problem presented at the end of the Pipeline Analysis problem. I have attached written solutions to the variations as a downloadable document with this lesson. I recommend watching this lesson before reading the solutions to the Pipeline Analysis problem variations, because the written solutions rely on the Algebraic solution derived in this lesson.
I have also uploaded solutions to the 4 Stage Pipeline Problem, which is was on the McKinsey recruiting web site (as of January 2015), as a separate file.
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