Jaman_khan's blog

Use pronounceable names
By Jaman_khan, 4 months ago, In English

I encountered an issue during today's Codeforces contest that I believe is worth discussing. Codeforces is an excellent platform for competitive programming, but I've noticed that the names used in recent Codeforces Round 957 (Div. 3) problem statements are often non-standard and difficult to pronounce. This has caused me significant trouble in understanding the problem statements. I hope that in the future, more care will be taken in choosing names that are clear and accessible to all participants.

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4 months ago, # |
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Auto comment: topic has been updated by Jaman_khan (previous revision, new revision, compare).

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4 months ago, # |
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Spoiler
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4 months ago, # |
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Is the problem that you cannot differentiate between words and names? If you can, the names do not matter. In addition, names are just for the storyline most of the time.

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    4 months ago, # ^ |
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    Why do they even use unnecessary, useless stories in problem statements? I always want them to provide short, crisp, to the point problem statements.

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      4 months ago, # ^ |
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      Then go to LeetCode and enjoy 10k+ ChatGPT solutions in every round.

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        4 months ago, # ^ |
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        Even more than half submissions in codeforces are copied.We need to make something like codeforces police to catch out the cheater something which will remove the ai effect then compare and so we can put the cheater tag on the cheaters

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        4 months ago, # ^ |
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        umm I don't think codeforces problems are solvable by chat GPT? And I'm not sure if those stories will make it difficult for chat GPT to solve. Moreover, Codeforces has had problem statements without stories. Look at this one: 1703F - Yet Another Problem About Pairs Satisfying an Inequality. I just want them to make every problem statement on codeforces like this.

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          4 months ago, # ^ |
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          fr absolutely hate story problems. LC is just so soothing to the eyes

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      4 months ago, # ^ |
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      i personally enjoy story style problem .sometimes they make u feel like character in story .

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      4 months ago, # ^ |
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      I think stories which make the statement more understandable than formulas are acceptable. But to people including me who do not use English often, these story statements mostly give them huge difficulty to understand what they should do. Sometimes feels like I spent so much effort for a lot of messages which aren't useful for me to solve the problem. I think Atcoder does better on this.

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        4 months ago, # ^ |
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        Yeah, Atcoder does A LOT better on this.

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        4 months ago, # ^ |
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        They should add a optional statement written in formal language, just like Atcoder or Luogu (the most famous CP platform in China).

        In China, adding statements in formal language is turning into a recommended habit.

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      4 months ago, # ^ |
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      the stories add to the enjoyment imo

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      4 months ago, # ^ |
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      guess we all have a sh*tty attention span ;-;

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    4 months ago, # ^ |
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    I think it's when there are multiple unpronounceable names, and they all begin with the same letter, then they're really difficult to keep track of while reading the problem statement.

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    4 months ago, # ^ |
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    Why are names (such as k1o0n) that are difficult to pronounce given in the problem statement? Such names often delay the understanding of the problem statement. Can't understandable names (such as Alice, and Bob) be used instead of such names?

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      4 months ago, # ^ |
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      actually those were the author's handle name ig like — Noobish_Monk

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4 months ago, # |
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I often see people complain about the language of the problem or the names but you have to understand that there are actually two things that is the source of this problem

  1. This platform is russian so the problems are always(except few occasions) made in Russian language then translated to english.

2.This hard language is what make those question non-answerable by AI like chat GPT like if you give a question of 1300+ rating I don't think Chat-GPT will give the right answer...So even if this makes us uncomfortable we have to stick to it for the sake of less cheating

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4 months ago, # |
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The best solution I came up with was to make the font italic, because the highlights are used in tasks. Or you can change the color of the names slightly, for example, gray or slightly lighter than the current black. As in this competition, the names were two words, but what if the creator has 3 words, for example Conqueror_Of_KFC. Or if name was written without spaces you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a name and a task legend.

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4 months ago, # |
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Often,the non-standard names used are the ids of contest purposers.So I think it will be helpful to check the ids of authors and contributers in advance.

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    4 months ago, # ^ |
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    Some contests before would color their ids just like these shown on codeforces platfrom(color indicating their rank),so I think we should advocate coloring names in latter contests.(like making a widely recongnize custom doing this)

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