Besher.'s blog

The amount of time I should spend before looking up the tutorial
By Besher., history, 5 years ago, In English

I've been training for a while now, and I've encountered a problem. whenever I try to solve a difficult problem, I either think in a solution for like 3 days and then see the tutorial, in which case I waste a lot of time for a single problem, and sometimes the solution doesn't have this much new information for me and isn't worth spending this much time on, or I see the solution earlier than that and I get mad cause I could come up with the solution myself. So I want to ask, how much should I think in the problem before looking up the tutorial? for both IOI-like problems and codeforces problems. Thanks!

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5 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +110 Vote: I do not like it

30 minutes of being completely stuck and not having new ideas

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5 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +6 Vote: I do not like it

I think it depends on person to person !!!

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5 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +27 Vote: I do not like it

It probably depends on your goal. The time you spend thinking without looking at the editorial is basically a balance between your problem solving skills and knowledge. What I mean by this is that if you feel that there are still common algorithms and tricks out there that you don't know, you probably should check editorials after 20-30 minutes. On the other hand, if you more often than not find out that you could have solved the problem yourself after checking out the editorial, the time frame should be something like 30-60 minutes.

As for myself, I didn't really enjoy this dilemma, so if I practise, I maintain a list of unsolved problems I would like to solve in future. If I can't solve some particular problem, I just try another one instead of checking the editorial which often just spoils the problem without providing me with anything useful. However, for sure this is not well-suited for the actual sense of learning.

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