fresher96's blog

By fresher96, 10 years ago, In English

hey guys ! i need some tips to organize my methods to study after my little experience in competitive programming, i'm now upon some ways to continue they are just 4 as i think, here they are from the most i follow

  1. watching videos, then solve problems related to the watched video (usually the video refers to some problems at the end)

  2. solving about 100 Div 2-A problem, in case of getting stuck with a problem read the editorial and and if something new is mentioned (data structure, algorithm, ...) go and read about it, then moving to Div 2-B and so on...

  3. reading books, like Competitive Programming 3, and solve some of the listed problems

  4. read editorials & tutorials from here (GYM) or Top Coder or somewhere else, then trying to solve the problems mentioned at the end

and of course once a while participate in contests to keep fit with time pressure these are the methods i follow, now i have a good knowledge in dynamic programming and the basics of graph traversals, i think that's all. because of some problems in Code Forces especially for the last certain rounds i think i'm very weak to come up with a greedy approach so i might start learning greedy by method 1 or start doing method 2.

due to your experience what do you suggest ? or any new ideas ?

any help would be appreciated.

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10 years ago, # |
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Well i actually did number 2 but man does div 2-B even need an algorithm? editorial what the hell? for div 2-B man ... you shouldn't read editorials for that if you can't solve div 2-B without editorial you may need technical help(i mean that you always can solve it you just need to think more) Also after trying 200 div2 A and B problems go for D and E problems thats what i did I read dp problems and tried to solve them after that i became fast at solving easy problems and could solve easy D and E's which helped me alot if you are stuck on a div 2 D problem or smth don't read the editorial leave the problem alone and try to solve it at a different time if you couldn't solve it at all and thinked about it for 3 hours take a look at the editorial maybe read the order or something that helps don't read all of it that's what i did by div2 A and B i meant 2 — 3 pages of sorted problems after that sort implementation problems and maybe start from the third page or so That'll help you in coding solving D E problems will help you in how to solve hard problems

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    10 years ago, # ^ |
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    for Div 2-A you are right as they are always about implementation, but some of the B problems are not that easy, maybe not for you because you are already yellow. about the (D & E)s the problem is that you can't solve them without a specific knowledge, for e.x. consider a graph problem that needs to find the shortest path between two nodes, you can't solve this problem if you don't acquire algorithms like Dijkstra, Floyd or at least BFS! i don't think there is someone smart enough to invent (reinvent) a new algorithm to do that in less than two hours

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      10 years ago, # ^ |
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      oh you haven't learnt alot of algorithms then you just need to learn them and practice them well there are easy D and E's which you can solve with some simple algorithms you can learn some of the algorithms at PrinceOfPersia's blog