STRINGRA had no “Story” as well, so that example is not actually relevant in “problem should not have a story”. In fact, you have yourself given a counter example, that stating statements mathematically makes it tough to understand.
(I hope you arent saying that “Chef constructed this graph, but then lost the sequence A, as well as all the labels on the graph. So all he has left is a directed graph” is the story there, because plainly there are 3 paragraphs of all mathematical definitions and stuff)
Also you cannot rule out that setter intentionally kept the language tough to raise the bar
PS: My comment is directed towards your statement “start working than a problem having "Ramayan", "Mahabharat", "History", "Drama",” because personally I dont find a little story here and there giving trouble in interpretting the question. Either way, its how the mathematical stuff etc. is put up, which is part of problem statement but not “Story”
I guess the setter tried to describe it mathematically in that String problem but he didn’t put it that clearly. All of the problems in this contest were clear and direct. For example, people complain about the delta symbol here. Actually, the setter just tried to be very direct here as the symbols used are actually used to denote diagonals of Pascal’s and Sierpinski’s triangle. So in a way, it was very clear and also gave some hints.
It was clear to people who know those symbols. I for instance, was literally like “WTF, where did this triangle come from?! What is this triangle?”
To me it was more like " John buys 6 apples, eats 5 of them. How many apples does Smith have?"
I think perhaps it was clear to those who know such symbols and things. I think we are both at a different perspective here, and both of our perspective matter. Ideally the statement should be a middle-way of both the extremes
I agree. May be there should have been some more examples. Especially, it would help testing our code. That little test case in the WEASELTX problem seemed pretty simple to me as it was passing for every wrong code I try to start with. I tried to solve that problem, in 5 different ways (50) every time though. I was always getting that little test case getting passed (even with wrong code).
Sometimes the setters just decide to be more evil XD . Because considerable efforts need to be put to find such a weak test case which passes many wrong solution.
I see divided opinions regarding the problem statement formulation, which is fine. To each his own :).
Fact is however, that this problem set had 5 solvable and 5 impossible problems for more than 97% of the coders. Just think about that :).
To everyone his opinions, rightly said dear :). In the end, the actual thing ought to be middle of the extreme two views to cater to all.
I personally feel story should be there so contestant HAS to make effort in stripping story off to get the pure mathematical form of statement. After which, he can easily google those concepts or start working if he is already acquainted with it. Giving pure analytic form itself, I interpret it as setter being lenient.
But of course, story is a trivial part of problem statement, and its quality is the first thing we must look after
Okay, so cakewalk, simple, simple, easy, easy-med, med (possibly med-hard), med (possibly med-hard), hard, hard. We will try to follow this up. Whenever we are in doubt, we will try to make the first 5 problems easier than making them harder. Does this work fine?
Regarding your suggestion of Solve more problems than their perfomance during previous contest) between or during contests by rewarding them with Codechef Laddus.
Some people are way too clever. There is scope for malpractice and thats a hindrance implementation of this suggestion. Else its pretty decent
