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$10,000 in the S&P 500 on 1 January 2008
What was it worth on 31 December 2008?
Your guess
$9,000
How to play
- 1Read the question, then drag the slider to your best guess.
- 2Lock it in before the fifteen seconds run out. A slider you never moved is not a guess.
- 3See the real figure, its source, and how close you were.
- 4Ten questions, then your score and the ones most worth remembering.
How this works
How a guess is scored
accuracy = 100 − |guess − answer| ÷ |answer| × 100
- S at 95% or better, A at 85, B at 70, C at 50, F below that
- Those grades are worth 500, 300, 200, 100 and 0 points
- A streak multiplies the base: 1 + 0.1 per answer in a row, capped at 2×
What this is actually testing
Not recall. You are not expected to know what the average salary for a role is, or what a market returned over twenty years. The question is whether your sense of the right order of magnitude is any good.
That matters more than it sounds. Most expensive financial mistakes are not made by people who got a number slightly wrong; they are made by people who were out by a factor of ten and had no instinct telling them so. Someone who feels that a figure is implausible asks a second question. Someone who does not, signs.
How the score is built
Your guess is scored as a percentage of how far off it was, relative to the real figure. Being 5% out on a large number and 5% out on a small one score the same, which is deliberate — proportion is the skill, not arithmetic.
Each answer also carries a streak multiplier. The multiplier uses the streak you had before this answer, adding 0.1 for each consecutive correct answer and stopping at 2×. So a long run of good estimates is worth far more than the same answers scattered through a round, because consistency is the thing being rewarded.
There is a small bonus for answering quickly, which exists to stop the fifteen seconds becoming fifteen seconds of arithmetic. The intention is a considered instinct, not a calculation.
Where people go wrong
Three patterns come up repeatedly.
- Anchoring on the first number in the question. If a figure is mentioned in the setup, estimates cluster around it regardless of whether it is relevant.
- Underestimating compounding. Over long periods, growth figures are reliably guessed far too low, because people extend a line when the real shape is a curve.
- Confusing a total with a rate, or a monthly figure with an annual one. This is the single most common source of answers that are out by a factor of twelve.
Where the numbers come from
Every figure in the game is a real published statistic with a source attached, and the source is shown the moment you lock in a guess rather than kept to the end. The full list of publications used across the site is on the sources page, and the questions are regionalised: a visitor in India is asked about Indian figures, not converted American ones.
Questions people ask
Do I need to know anything about finance to play?
No, and that is rather the point. The game is about judgement of scale. Someone who has never read a financial statement can score well by reasoning carefully from what they do know, and someone who works in the field can score badly by assuming.
Why is being close enough to count as "perfect" only 95%?
Because for a judgement question, landing within five percent of a real published figure from instinct alone is genuinely very good. A stricter threshold would reward lucky precision rather than good estimation, which is the opposite of what the game is for.
Why does the streak matter so much?
A single good guess can be luck. Eight in a row cannot. The multiplier is capped at 2× so a streak is worth having without making the first half of a round irrelevant, and it is calculated from the streak before each answer so breaking one costs you immediately rather than retroactively.
Are the questions the same every time?
No. Each round is drawn from a larger bank, and recently served questions are tracked so you are not handed the same ten twice in a row. The bank is regional, so the figures you are asked about are the ones from where you are.
Method and figures last reviewed . Every worked example here is produced by the same calculation the page runs — enter the same inputs above and the numbers will match.