peacebringer167's blog

How do I learn competitive programming effectively
By peacebringer167, history, 3 years ago, In English

Do you guys have any plans to learn competitive programming effectively? I've studied CP for almost 2 years but my rating is still Pupil.

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3 years ago, # |
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I've studied CP for almost 3 years

Your graph and heat map is contradicting

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3 years ago, # |
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Actually, it's all innate talent. You're either born smart or not. See tourist? He's the most talented in competitive programming on Earth, and if anyone manages to beat his records, then that person is more talented than tourist. Get it? It's all talent

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    Look at this person's comments. You will see that they're just a troll account.

    And if you ask any LGM if they were "just born smart" they will tell you something like "Well, there was a time when I didn't know bfs."

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3 years ago, # |
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I would highly recommend you to buy this book CP4 or follow an online guide similar to what this book is doing. A concrete path of studying will be helpful.

Basically this book contains all well-known algorithms and tips required for CP (book 2 contains more advanced algorithms that I almost never see in Div2 A-D). The book also contains practice qns on Kattis for every topic, which I have solved almost all of them. This will make you more proficient in these algos and train your problem solving skills. After that you can spam CF contests and upsolve till C/D, and more if you're good.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    Yes, I agree. I also started CP with CP4 last November and did most of the problems in Book 1. With just Book 1 and the Math chapter in Book 2 (important for Mathforces), you should be able to do most rated <2000 problems which is like until Div2D. Beyond that, you probably have to dig around and learn more exotic stuff. You can also do past IOI/ICPC problems.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
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    thank you!

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3 years ago, # |
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I bet you already know the first half, that is, solve lots of problems
Maybe you don't know other half, that is, why solve lots of problems?

Wrong idea :
After solving a lot of problems, somehow magically interesting thoughts pop up in the brain and we end up solving hard problems.

Correct idea :
- To furnish our vision of identifying probable approaches.
- To become faster at exploring through those approaches one by one and reduce solve time.
- To practice our intuition of identifying hints / facts to focus on given in the statement and how to manipulate them.

So after solving a problem, it's important to ask ourselves did we improve at any of these skills? Or did we just looked at the solution and assumed it was supposed to somehow magically land in our brain, but it didn't, someday the magic will start happening.

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