I agree to what you say But Still Math is an important part in creating an algorithm. Also when a question is based on algo and ds it is straightforward and the solution is just to find a correct place to implement a pre written algorithm. But mathematical questions involve creating a new algorithm which is much important than just cramming some algorithms and saying you are competitive programmer. Even Legendary programmers like Gennady Korotkevich require so much time to tackle unconditional math problems (you can checkout this year’s codejam for example). For example take first question of September long challenge the main challenge is to find Nth fibonacci no. in as short as possible time. Many people just search on Google for Nth fibonacci no. And they see a formula pop up and they use it. Instead the formula which you got by searching you must have developed it yourself. Programming is not just implementing algorithms its about creating algorithms.
Stop the discussion of ongoing contest problems
This is your view : - Algorithmic Thinking is cramming and mathematical stuff is all nice , creative stuff .
No, mathematical questions are the easy-medium ones(if you have practiced), all you need to do is figure out the formula and paste it . More cheating occurs when all questions are math based because guys just need to ask each other the forumla to solve the question .
Programming has many parts like : - dp,graph and trees .
If you don’t study these in depth you will face hard time if you participate in any regular programming contest .
No, the kind of math we are talking about is different. Math is by all means allowed in all contests, but when its just some theorems which only PhD guys know or you have to do research on it…its not worth it .
Even if 50% contest is math contest, its all fine, I love math-stuff, but >50% is not good…
“Competitive Programming means to solve a problem by manipulating the algorithms you know and using some general tricks and ideas(and few times to come up with a completely new idea) .”
You don’t need to become Dijkstra and invent the shortest path algorithm in a 2-hour contest .
No one with basic knowledge of cp re-invents the wheel in a contest .
In one way, I do agree with you, though I would like to bring my point of view forward.
Let me use Codeforces as an example, since you have compared Codechef to Codeforces.
Notice the contest duration difference between Codeforces and CC Long Challenges. A typical CF contest is ~2.5 hours, whereas a long challenge is ~240 hours. Quite a gap right? Now notice the number of successful submissions for the hardest problems in the set during the CF contest.
In a span of 2 hours, multiple people have managed to correctly solve all the problems in the set. If the problems in CC longs were mainly algo and DS based (like most CF problems), eventually many would solve nearly every problem in the set. Whats the point of competition then? No one would even have substantial rating changes then, leading to people slowing moving away from CC.
This is why math based problems are included. The amount of time provided is sufficiently enough to reduce the problem to an equation and research on the best method to solve it. Most of the people just give up once they realize it requires math, as they simply want a straightforward implementation problem.
With the time duration of the contest, one could easily make testers, generators and observe patterns, thus finally reaching the answer.
Also, its not like all the questions are complete math based - they do include some algo and other related stuff.
Regarding the number of contests conducted, CF has a bigger, more active user base than CC. This is one of the main reasons for the difference in the number of contests.
Summing it all up, we really need to appreciate CC for its novel 10 day coding contest. TBH, most of my cp learning has taken place during these wonderful contests. Also, if you have medium~hard problems requiring little to no math, you should really apply to become a problem setter. Only then you would realize the amount of difficulty present in making a pure algo/ds problem to engage many participants over the 10 days of the contest.
In any case, COOK-OFF and LTIME is conducted every month with most problems requiring little math knowledge. So in my opinion, LONG contests are mainly for learning new stuff (so what if it is math, it is still educative!) and short ones, like all other short contests, are for ioi/icpc aspirants.
There are many algorithmic problems in Codechef Long Contests which get only 5 or 6 submissions:- CodeChef: Practical coding for everyone
So, putting hard problems related to DSA is also feasible .
But codeforces arranges so many contests in a month with so many problems, and Codechef needs only 7-8 problems for long(each month), if I am right ?? Then also, it is hard ? 
Lol. But if CF contests were made ioi style with 6 hours contest duration, 100-200(the figure might be wrong!) pple would get rank 1. So, comparing it to the 10 long days of contest, you could really understand the difficulty involved in making befitting problems…
100-200 can never get rank-1 if we use codeforces ranking system, even in codechef short contests, 100-200 ppl will never get rank-1 as everybody takes different time to solve problems.
Yes, in ioi system , its possible!!
The only thing required is :- Long Problems need to be hard. I get it as we have 10 days, so when setters are not able to find hard enough problems for a 10-days contest, they put math problems .
I have no problem with math qns, it boosts score.
the thing I hate is when the question starts with “you have given a tree of N nodes blah blah blah…”
and the solution come to be 2-3 line formula…
You mean SJ1 problem from April Long ?
I personally like math problems as much as I like problems requiring only DSA. I really don’t understand the sentiment behind (by @syntaxhacker)
“questions based on observations and pattern findings instead of algorithms and ds”
How can you separate ds & algorithm from math is beyond my brain can comprehend. My guess is that you want problems that require nothing but knowing already discovered and well-known algorithms you can find in sites and solve without using your brain. If you lack the ability or passion to “observe” and “find patterns” and create your own algorithms then you’re in it just for jobs. Here’s an idea for your little brain: Someone had to “observe” & “find patterns” to come up with quicksort which to you may be an algorithm but is actually math & observation. Don’t try to classify DSA as not-math just because you suck at real math and got the idea that you are good at math simply because you can copy some math-stuffs which are trivialised to the point that they are not considered as “math” to you.
You are acting as if pure mathematical problems are never given on CC or any online platform.
If you are still in doubt, try and tell what DS and Algo are used along with Math in this - COMPEXP Problem - CodeChef
Here’s an idea for your little brain:
Not only are you giving an entire bullshit argument to the discussion but also flaming. I guess the one with “little” brain is someone else. 
Don’t try to classify DSA as not-math just because you suck at real math
From the discussion, its pretty clear that their real unrest lies in the PhD or research paper math given in long instead of DS+ Algo questions. For PhD math it becomes a big googling game for most peeps.
Then get some perspective first before posting.
90% people pariticipating in long challenges weren’t preparing for icpc or ioi or becoming any computer scientists for putting up such math questions .
most beginners dont have much math based observation . the goal of the long challenges is to help for us to learn new algos and use them differntly to solve the questions .so if we does oberserving for that silly pattern writing in books for days and realise how dumb we are when we find the actual answer or formulae and cry how much time we wasted for that when we will be able to do other problems based on algorithms and ds which are actually useful in real world problems instead stuck at the very first problem .
@faded4k
Lastly , if you want math based and love so much math problems just do project euler problems Or try cracking np hard problems and stick with them .
Yep. I’m the one with the “little” brain. Also I thought flaming a bit was okay since the entire sentiment behind this thread is flaming against math by people who thought they were cool at math but suddenly got their dreams shattered 
Well then, get your perspective right and stop spamming. 
so just stop caring about the post when you just consider just yourself as one who is giving the contest. there are beginners as well experts giving the contest which you should keep in mind . when preparing long challenges imagine if people who were new to this cp ( who joined computer science or just started cp ) stuff and just see math based question involving just the pattern findings as the very first qn which considered as the easy problem will give up on doing cp as they find it hard and find no usage of algorithms in that find no interest in solving that just wasting their time .
More knowledge in TCS questions , oh the Irony is true! 
I thought you had exams…
Yup, I have and I procrastinate as well. I am sorry . 