Hi, Codeforces!
We are pleased to invite you to EPIC Institute of Technology Round Summer 2024 (Div. 1 + Div. 2), which will be held on Jun/30/2024 17:35 (Moscow time). You will be given 8 problems, two of which are divided into two subtasks, and you will have 3 hours to solve them. The round will be rated for everyone.
At least one of the problems will be interactive, so please read the guide for interactive problems if you are not familiar with it.
We would like to thank:
- errorgorn for coordinating the round.
- Geothermal, turmax, noimi, SomethingNew, feecIe6418, Endagorion, glebustim, zeliboba, thanhchauns2, zengminghao, mwen, cristi_tanase, milind0110, CSQ31, Evirir, AkiLotus, htetgm, TrendBattles, GreatEagle, chromate00, Valenz, Vamperox, priyanshu.p, DOCUTEE, Tran_Thi_Thanh_Van, and tibinyte for testing the round and providing useful feedback.
- MikeMirzayanov for Codeforces and Polygon.
We hope you'll like the problemset!
UPD: The score distribution is 250 — 750 — 1000 — 1500 — 1750 — (2000 — 500) — (3000 — 2000) — 5000
UPD2: Editorial (work in progress)
And now, a few words from today's sponsor!
About EPIC Institute of Technology
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Lectures will be pre-recorded and available for self-study. Practical classes will be held at the specified time according to the provided schedule. Also, students will have an access to a Discord server, where they can discuss topics of academic interest with teachers and other students.
In what language will I study?
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The admissions process is as follows:
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As a tester, I was blue at the time I tested.
As a tester, I was green at the time I tested.
As a tester, I had 0 contribution at the time I tested.
As a tester, I was orange while testing and then going roller-coaster to blue and then purple today.
As a tester, I was cooking my brain in blue.
As a tester, did I even test this?
why your profile have negative rating?
because he's really bad at cp
no, i don't think so, he has authored contests in past.. i am curious how
EPIC site has really unique design
As I wasn't a tester, I don't know why I'm doing this...
Sir, I didn't find any section about authors
As a participant, I hope my color will also change after participation :)
+121? :o (btw i wanna get back to specialist after this contest, or at least stay at P)
look at my profile :)
As a tester, when did I test this?
As a participant, I hope to reach blue this round.
Your already a blue.
233 point to CM, I can't wait
1665 points to LGM, i can't wait :clown:
i don't mean that i will reach CM in this round but i'm exiting to be CM as soon as possible
Hopes should be realistic bro
All the best bro
wtf epic games hosting cf round?!11!
Very few words indeed :)
As a participant, I want to know how many problems there are, and whether there are any interactive problems.
How many problems and what will be the score distribution of these problems in this round?
As a participant, I hope my color will be different after contest.
Even the number of colors you have may change! (By becoming lgm)
As a participant, I hope my color will be change after the contest.
As a participant, I hope to get my purple name back xD
Hello smart people, I wander through comments below posts to ask for helping with my problem.
I can`t solve problem, can you help me, please? I thank everyone in advance.
Thanks, anymore I don`t need your help, I have solved it
I assume that you weren`t be able to open this task because it is private, if it is true, accept my apologies.
what is rating distribution for this round??
The score distribution will be published later.
As not a tester, how to be a tester actually?
Very good Question actually. Someone please answer this.
If someone setting a round knows you and trusts you they might contact you to be a tester. It doesn't really have any requirements it's just up to the setters
Can anyone join in the CF group?
As a bored random person surfing Codeforces, I smiled reading other comments on this.
hope to become CM again
Plz approve the request to join the EPIC Institute of Technology group on Codeforces!
I'm new to Codeforces so I don't know much about this but is this round affect my Codeforces rating or it will be unrated??
Read the statement.
Oh got it:) I though its not Codeforces one so it might be rated
Vladithur is back )
i hope i become purple after this round :)
same
same
Are the problems in div1+2 harder than standard div2 problems?
from experience, they are aaround the same in difficulty. Div1+2A ~ Div2A.
Is it Rated?
yes
How many problems will be there?
i hope i can reach 1750 in the next two rounds QAQ
that means i have to rank about 1000 a little bit tricky..
Wait no score distribution?
Please publish the score distribution
I am also waiting for it
as a tester, i wish you good luck, problems are good
Do you think I can be an expert today?
You can do it.
your hopes should be realistic
It's not about what others think it's about what you think.
Hope to solve 5 problems this contest
Maybe it will be my last div.1 contest before NOI2024.
Good luck to everyone.
What does (2000 — 500) mean in the score distribution? Why are there parentheses?
It means Problem 6 is divided into two subtasks, where first one is worth 2000 points and second one 500 points. Second one is worth less because if you solve the first one, second one may be a bit easy after the knowledge you gain from the first. OR you may start second one directly as solving it will solve both of them at the same time.
I see, so basically two problems but the second one is the harder version of it?
I have braced myself for turning green again. But let's hope it doesn't come to that :)
contest is not over yet, but i cant anymore. i thought i would at least solve 2 but ended up with one. anyways, good contest i guess
The pain of watching your rank go down for ~2hrs, minute by minute, as more cheaters submit the +1th(D) problem correctly. :(
375 pretests in H? What?
nice round) A in 2 mins, staring at B 1 hours, staring at C 0.5 hour, staring at D one hour
any hint for $$$D$$$?
Some observations I made:
Alice's strategy should be greedy
Bob must take all of the occurrences of a cake for his actions to be useful
Can we memoize based on position/turns?
I tried to implement a strategy where I count the number of elements of tastiness x > (greatest tastiness Alice has eaten) and then erase one of the elements from whichever element has the fewest identical elements, but I couldn't figure out how to implement it in time. I also don't know if it works.
I also tried assigning cakes to bob greedily(minimum frequency first) but I got wa2
Yeah I started with greedy too. The correct approach requires dp. The tutorial is out now.
solved using memoization (dp) ,logic is if bob has to remove any number than he remove all occurences of the number, calculate frequency of all element then store in a vector and do o(n^2) memoization (knapsack) you can see the memoization dp solution 268191223
The contest was nice, but am I the only one who feels that the problems were slightly on the standard side?
D was a cool problem, here's how I solved it:
Alice's strategy is obviously greedy, so she should always take the minimum available cake. Then we can memoize based on the position in the array and the number of turns taken. Let Bob gain 1 turn every time Alice eats a cake, and have the choice to remove a cake from the game for freq[cake] turns. We can simulate this using DP in O(N^2).
I had the same idea but it failed on pretest 2 :(
What could be the problem? 268218168
What was D?
Don't know what to do in CP, just try DP.
newbiew's who only know greedy :-<
Alice will eat one of each cake tastiness in ascending order except for those tastiness values where Bob can eat all the cakes before Alice reaches it.
So for Bob the strategy is simple, he wants to pick the maximum number of tastiness values $$$t_1, t_2, ... t_k$$$ such that he can eat all of their cakes BEFORE Alice reaches the corresponding tastiness values.
Since it is only optimal for Alice to eat them in ascending order, we can sort the tastienss values in ascending order and do a knapsack like dp on their counts. Let $$$dp_{i, j}$$$ mean that Alice has managed to eat $$$j$$$ of the $$$i$$$ smallest cakes and Bob has $$$dp_{i, j}$$$ remaining turns for which we haven't decided what cake he ate. Then the transititions just become:
$$$1$$$. Alice eats a cake of the current tastiness and Bob gains another turn — $$$dp[i + 1][j + 1] = max(dp[i + 1][j + 1], dp[i][j] + 1)$$$
$$$2$$$. We use Bob's remaining previous turns to eat the remaining cakes (if possible) — $$$dp[i + 1][j] = max(dp[i + 1][j], dp[i][j] - cakecnt[i])$$$ (iff $$$dp[i][j] >= cnts[i]$$$).
Then the maximum $$$j$$$ for which $$$dp[n][j]$$$ is $$$\geq 0$$$ is clearly the answer.
ahh got it, thanks
wouldn't it be the minimum $$$j$$$?
Is problem D just a greedy simulation with priority queue?
Edit: Nevermind, you can just do a linear iteration over possible Bob moves for each greedy Alice move and get $$$O(n^2)$$$
I thought D felt similar to a priority queue simulation problem like this one, https://codeforces.net/contest/1974/problem/G , but I found doing take-not-take DP to be an easier approach
After some dirty optimization, I passed the pretest test of problem E (hoping I could pass the systest by luck). Can anyone tell me how to do it correctly?
If $$$a_v \gt \sum a_{child}$$$, then we clearly need to increment $$$a_{child}$$$ for some child.
Notice that incrementing a node $$$v$$$ by $$$1$$$ means that we will need to increment some chain of nodes $$$x_1, x_2, \cdots x_k$$$ where $$$x_1 = v$$$, $$$x_i$$$ is a child of $$$x_{i - 1}$$$ and one of the following conditions is satisfied for $$$x_k$$$:
Also observe that a given node can be used as $$$x_k$$$ by the first condition at most $$$\sum a_{child} - a_{x_K}$$$ times, while a leaf node can be used an unlimited number of times.
Moreover, such a chain results in a cost of $$$k$$$. So at any instant, we want to pick the shortest chain possible, i.e, pick a node least depth first among nodes in the subtree of $$$v$$$ which satisfy the above condition.
So we can just store the number of possible contributions at each depth for the subtree of each $$$v$$$ while iterating using dfs and use the above approach to fix cases where $$$a_v \gt \sum a_{child}$$$.
Code — 268172990
Oh, I understand now. Thank you for your explanation and the clean code.
Great contest, the problems are very clear to understand.
enjoyed the contest, really nice problems.
The samples are a little bit weak, especially for F and G1 :(
Couldn't debug G1 in time :(
Though my predictor says I have positive delta :)
Hope to be CM the first time after the system testing.
congratulations in advance
Congrats!!! DuongForeverAlone, But u were always the "Master"! and Best of Luck! for System Testing.
In problem D, was anyone else getting the right answers for the sample test when the code run locally but got WA on pretest 1 when uploaded to codeforces?
What should I do the next time this happens to me?
try debugging it on custom invocation
For about half an hour I was wrestling with MLE on problem E, but I still have very little idea what was really causing it in the first place: first submission that passed pretests 268214003, resubmission without clearing vectors by hand 268217966 (by the looks of it switching from pbds to a map solved the problem). Did I fall victim to some funny memory allocation shenanigans with vectors, or are pbds just that evil when it comes to memory consumption?
I feel the problemset is a bit too unbalanced because ABDEFG are optimization problems, considering the major classification between optimization and counting.
I liked D and especially F, though. Thanks for preparing the round!
constraints of D are just to trick?
Maybe. Although I used O(n^2) approach, there possibly has an O(n) IMO.
first attempt -> O(n^2 * log(n)) -> TLE
second attempt -> fast IO -> MLE
third attempt -> O(n * log(n)) -> pretest pass hope no FST
really enjoyed the contest :)
does this approach work for problem D ?
every turn, Alice will choose the minimum cake that she didn't eat yet
then, Bob will take the maximum cake with the lowest frequency which Alice didn't eat, and he didn't eat all of them (every turn, Bob will reduce the frequency by one until there are no more cakes left with that number)
what did I miss ?
Assume there's an array {t[1], t[2], ..., t[r]} and Bob need to let Alice can't eat cakes with tastiness t[i]. Then for each tastiness t of cakes, let f[t]=1 is Alice can eat it, f[t]=-cnt[t] if Alice can't eat it, then every prefix sum of f[t] must be non-negative. You need to find the maximum array size by DP.
How to solve c?
Simulate the process.
The constraints are too high for simulation right?
You could simulate it in O(n) actually.
How? Please explain.
dp[n]=h[n], dp[i]=max(h[i], dp[i+1]+1)
Traverse $$$a$$$ in reverse order. It is easy to see that the whole process will be terminated when $$$a_1 = 0$$$. Then, we only need to care about some positions $$$i$$$ such that $$$a_{i - 1} <= a_i$$$ because it will cause the process "delay". We will add $$$a_{i - 1} - a_i + 1$$$ to our result in this case because it is the required time to make $$$a_{i - 1} > a_i$$$. In the case that $$$a_{i - 1} > a_i$$$, we need to subtract $$$a_{i - 1}$$$ with the time that has passed, i.e our current result. The answer will be result added by the current $$$a_1$$$.
Submission: 268158682
if
a[i]>a[i+1]
then ith will take a[i] amount of time to reach 0 but ifa[i]<=a[i+1]
then it will take some extra time which will be equal to the timea[i+1]
takes to reacha[i]-1
so simulate this time taken by each tree from right to left and the time taken by the leftmost tree will be the answeri thought about finding increasing order from backward(N , N-1...) and currTime will the index where this break + 1( if there if atleast 1 more value than maxValue of sequence) and making this segments and taking maximum time
Try to find how the answer increase from [i+1....n] to [i....n].
If a_i is smaller than a_i+1, it means there must be some point where a_i equals a_i+1, and when a_i+1 becomes 0, the work is done between[i+1....n], and more importantly a_i is now 1.so ans++. If equal, ans++.
If bigger, it depends on what the current answer is. If current answer is bigger or equal than a_i, it still means there must be some point where a_i equals a_i+1, thus ans++. And if current answer is less, ans+=a_i-ans,which i guessed out.
Since h>0, it is enough with:
for (int j=0;j<n;j++) m=max(m,h[j]+j);
(find the height which is the most costly)
is E slopetrick? if so i'd be depressed cuz i've been solving slopetrick problems.
I just bashed it with brute force until it passed pretests (still can FST tho). I also considered small-to-large merging, but at the time I thought it was not going to work.
merge what?
And what is FST
thank you so much
FST — fail system tests
In short in my solution I was pulling negative sum nodes to their ancestors
seems i wasn't even close to the proper solutions.
and thx.
yes (at least the way I solved it)
Saw D and E and realised its way out of my paygrade so just watched the Euros instead. Still is surprising seeing so many AC on D and E. Can anyone explain them? I am really dumb
solved D using simple memoization (just think if bob has to remove any element then he should have to remove all occurrences of that element and just do dp[submission:268191223]
For D:
Observation 1: Order does not matter, so move things around however we want
Observation 2: It is always optimal for Alice to eat the smallest cake, so we should sort the cakes
Observation 3: Bob should only eat a cake if he intends to eat all of those cakes of that level of tastiness
So with that, we can reduce this problem down to: for each type of cake (so we aggregate into tastiness, frequency pairs) in sorted order of tastiness, will Bob eat all of this type of cake or will Alice eat one of the cakes?
Let's think about the consequences of each action
Alice eats the cake: +1 to Alice's score, but Bob can eat 1 more cake
Bob eats the cake: Bob can eat $$$count[cake]$$$ fewer cakes, but Alice's score does not change.
Let $$$dp[i, j]$$$ represent the minimum number of cakes Alice can eat, starting with the $$$i^{th}$$$ least tastiest cake with Bob being able to eat $$$j$$$ cakes.
This leads to recurrences:
Place your bets, gentlemens: will my F1 randomized solution with time cutoff FST or not?
FST
Not FST
Pretests = systests in this problem, so probably not)
I have a solution for problem D with a complexity of $$$O(nlogn)$$$ 268173518. It's observed that Alice always picks the cake with the lowest tastiness from those remaining, and Bob will use some of his turns to take all cakes with the same tastiness. Therefore, we can solve this problem greedily. Specifically, when considering cakes sorted in increasing order of tastiness, if Bob can take all cakes with the same tastiness as the current cake being considered, we let Bob take them all. Otherwise, Bob will discard the maximum number of cakes he would have taken before and replace them with the current cake's value (provided there are fewer cakes of that value than the previous ones). Therefore, it's straightforward to use a priority queue to solve it.
Was C really easy or am I just stupid?
many problems are easy... once you know the solution
Another Cheatforces round...thank u indian students...submissions on C is crazy(bcoz code is small and easy to copy)
Indians would rather die as a newbie but won't live as a cheater
What are u reading ? Please don't
Thanks for the contest! Problems were quite good! Enjoyed today!
Problems are clean and organized overall, but the samples are a bit weak, especially for problem F. Literally any code could pass it (even if the dp was completely nonsense).
BTW, E could be solved easily in $$$O(n\log n)$$$ with small to large merging, just curious why was the constraint $$$5000$$$?
I suspect its to prevent irritating issues with overflows. Like, you need a leaf to contribute at least $$$n \cdot \max(a)$$$, but a node can sum to upto $$$n \cdot n \cdot max(a)$$$ which will overflow int64 for $$$n = 2 \cdot 10^5$$$ and $$$a_i \leq 10^9$$$. This is fairly easy to fix by capping the sum to $$$n \cdot \max(a)$$$ but its also irritating for no real reason.
Also, I personally feel that adding small to large merging doesn't make the problem any better, its a bog standard implementation of it.
The second reason is correct, I didn't feel like it added much to the problem)
Random stress tester for F save me from penalty for F1 (Wrong greedy (take from back if possible) passes all quite small cases, so I should try larger tests, but happily in random case the number of possible state is not so large)
I actually was convinced the greedy idea was wrong but it passed ~500 rounds / 2 mins of stress testing at $$$N = 16$$$ so I submitted the code, only for it to find a countercase 2 seconds after submission T_T
Sorry this might be dumb but what is random stress tester, is it different from stress testing we do?
Everybody at cloudflare needs to be locked up
I'm a little confused why G2 is separated from G1, the feeling of having to add many cases and pre-calculations into the code is really frustrating. (And I failed to debug it in time)
Using G1 only will make the problem more clean. Discard G1 and use G2 only will make the thinking process less interrupted and will prevent coding from being tedious in my opinion.
Anyway, the problems are good.
also curious if it is possible to implement G2 quickly and clean
For me, the number of cases was the same for G1 and G2. For G2 all I needed to add was if statements before some of the cases from the G1 solution.
In this contest, I definitely reached the expert and at the end of the competition I decided to resubmit problem D with optimization (just like that, I understood that my first solution worked). But I didn’t know that only the last attempt is counted, where is it even said about this? And why some people have multiple parcels tested (in system tests). Because of this stupid rule, I will not reach the expert, thanks for this, any desire for programming is gone.
When a contestant realizes there is a bug in their submission, and have not yet locked it, they should be able to resubmit. Naturally, the last such attempt will be tested.
If you want to submit an optimized version that shouldn't affect the standings, you can do it after the contest.
Why can't system tests just test solutions in order?
Because it will be abused by solutions which pass with certain probability?
Still, it is assumed that the pretests are good enough
Random algorithms are random no matter the test.
So one could submit several random solutions and the chance of all of them failing would be significantly smaller.
lol
orz
First Solves
A: InternetPerson10
B: tourist
C: gamegame
D: Benq
E: tourist
F1: tourist
F2: tourist
G1: tourist
G2: ecnerwala
H: Radewoosh
Thank you for the contest!
In particular, most of the problems get away from the common pattern of "solve me much faster than O(input^2)", which is nice and refreshing.
started 50 min late,great contest tho
can anyone plz tell what is wrong with my logic for B. here is my code-268197602