People who write complicated programs implementing financial algorithms for things like high-frequency trading of stocks, often using esoteric functional programming languages such as F# or OCaml.
Imagine you have a big jar of jellybeans, and you want to know how many are inside without counting them one by one. Quants are like the smart kids who can use math and special tricks to figure out the number of jellybeans in the jar. In the grown-up world, quants are people who:
So, quants are like super-smart helpers who use their math and computer skills to help people make good choices with their money.
(Comment was written by Perplexity.AI, and edited by a human just for you!)
I remember someone interviewing Coding Jesus and explained a high freq trading law and he described his job about how to do that illegal activity.
So smart that they are stupid