Remember this!
Updated: Dec 26, 2019
Case Interview is not your typical university exam and there is very little data to learn by heart, however some data sets could be extremely useful. We split these into two types – data that can help you do math faster and data that could help you with guesstimate / market sizing type questions.
For the latter, knowing some basic information about the size, demographics and economy of key world countries, with the emphasis on the country and city you are interviewing in will go a long way to help you solve the market sizing question and demonstrate the interviewer that you are business-savvy and well read.
Many market sizing questions can be solved top-down from the population of a country, and it could be quite embarrassing to ask the interviewer about the population of your own country. Knowing the demographics of the country, will help you solve questions where consumption differs by income.
Here are some basic datasets we’ve collected, with focus on the US. It is worth memorising those.
Data to help you do math faster
Fractions / Percent / Decimal conversion table
Time units (note: in most of the cases, you can and should use rounded figures to simplify calculations)
Data for Market Sizing questions
Population and GDP per Capita of selected countries and regions
Average income by quintile (US)
Other useful data points:
Life expectancy – 80 years
Size of household – 2.5 (can be rounded to 3)
Interest rate on savings (US, 2019) – 1%
Interest rate on loans (US, 2019) – 5%
Read our blog post on Market Sizing Questions to learn how to solve this type of questions.