Optiver Excel Challenge: Mastering Probabilistic Decisions
Congratulations to the Optiver Excel Challenge 2025 winners and participants!
The event is organised by the Digital Skills Lab and LSE Careers, in partnership with global market maker Optiver and provides students an opportunity to develop practical skills.
This year, the challenge took place in February and focused on decision-making and probabilistic thinking through real-world scenarios in the current financial markets, using Excel.
The challenge consisted of finding a mispriced market, analysing and justifying the correct probability, presenting their findings to the judges. 39 students took part, representing 15 departments.
Before entering the competition, students had to attend Excel prerequisite workshops. Once this step completed, students attended lectures and data retreats, were put into working groups, chose their markets and worked on their final presentations.
The participants demonstrated with brio their skills in predicting markets in real life situations, showcasing fascinating probabilistic reasoning in contexts ranging from presidential elections, egg prices, NBA most valuable player to the Oscars’ best picture.
The winning teams are:
Best Presentation category:
Team Data Dynamos
Chosen market: Romanian election
- Ada (Maria) Garan, Department of Economic History
- Ana-Maria Skaricic, Department of International Development
- Magnus Yeung, Department of Statistics
- Oliver Gregor, Department of Economics
Team Sum Savants:
Chosen market: egg prices
- Kate Banner, Department of Philosophy
- Luca Pellegrino, European Institute
- Oncel Aldanmaz, Department of Statistics
Best Idea category
Team Number Ninjas:
Chosen market: NBA most valuable player
- Filip Surbek, Department of Accounting
- Jiacheng Sun, Department of Management
- Maxine Estaran, Department of International Development
- So Hoi Ling, Department of Economics
- Yimin Huang, Department of Economics
Runner Ups category:
Team Spreadsheets Sprinters:
Market chosen: Oscars best picture
- Aviral Agarwal, Department of Finance
- Dennis Malaj, Department of Statistics
- Yong Xin Chai, Department of Statistics
- Zoe Thomas, Department of Economics
Overall Winners category:
Team Formula Fiends:
Chosen market: Ecuador presidential election
- Álvaro Fernández Jiménez, Department of Mathematics
- Myra Stok, Department of Philosophy, Logic and the Scientific Method
- Nathaniel Hall, Department of Methodology
- Nazokatkhon Makhmudova, Department of Management
If you are interested in developing practical skills that will enhance your studies and maximise your career opportunities, we'll announce here in the autumn term new events organised by the Digital Skills Lab and partners for the academic year 2025/2026.
If you have another idea for a digital skills based challenge you would like us to help develop, please do get in touch by emailing us at digital.skills.lab@lse.ac.uk