Once I read that the hardest problems to come up is the easiest one. It seems is true, I’ve read many proposals for cakewalks, and most of them are just implementation problems and doesn’t require interesting observations. I think that all problems should have some beauty, even the cakewalk.
Usually when I invent problems, I don’t think about the difficulty because I get problems from real life situations, or sometimes my subconcious invent the problem and I have already the idea in my mind when I wake up, the hardest part of this way of generating problems is finding a solution!
In one of my cook-offs, I had to send three different proposals for the cakewalk! one got rejected because it was too hard, and the other because there was some corner cases and definitions that could be missed by newbies.
Arjun told me that the cakewalk is intended to be solved by a complete newbie in a reasonable time. The first problem that I accepted for a long challege was REDONE (REDONE Problem - CodeChef), I still think is a good problem for cakewalk, because it is easy to code, and it requires a nice simple observation (the order of performing the operations doesn’t matter). Unfortunately, I forgot many newbies doesn’t know how to handle the overflow, and the problem got less ACs than expected.
PS. We are missing a cakewalk for september long, if you have a problem that requires a simple (interesting) observation, share it here: Problem Idea Submission | CodeChef
I think every problem has it’s own beauty. I gave my first cake walk problem in a long challenge( Problem ) and got excepted. I think some times you have to be yourself careful about the corner cases.
I remember REDONE, i solved it when i started as a beginner. I did encounter overflows, but since it was a long challenge i googled, learned and solved that. But what i didn’t knew back then was memoization. I think it got less AC because of that. I think in long challenge cakewalk problems should also be a little involved because people learn when they face difficulty
i think in this long challenge division 2 first
4 problems were cakewalks
they were not as good as before long challenge problems
i think REDONE in may long challenge will teach something useful
i dont think any problem should have >20 accuracy in a div 2 long challenge
i think there should be tougher problems so that we solve less and realize we
that we know nothing(which is true af)
practice more and learn more about algorithms
and data structures that can efficiently
perform req operation
learn abt
->hashing
->binary search
->two pointers
also some data structures
->trees graphs
->bfs and dfs
->RMQ handling
choose a site and practice as much as possible (geeksforgeeks to strengthen basics or hackerearth)
and regularly participate in contests and upsolve them
Can you give me some tips bro. I am a very poor coder and not able to improve. How can I become as good as you(4 star) or even better? I am a pathetic noob
Just start practicing problems on codechef and take part in contests on codechef and codeforces. If you stuck in a problem in a long challenge, then just move away from the problem. Try to solve in those 10 days, because you’ll learn something for sure(Searching on google helps a lot). Read the editorial and again try to implement the approach. Don’t get demotivated.
. I don’t think i can share link because that will be illegal .