lucky_21's blog

Invitation to January Circuits '22
By lucky_21, history, 3 years ago, In English

Hello everyone!

Another long and exciting contest is here, January Circuits '22, with 8 amazing problems, should be solved in 7 days. The contest will start on Saturday, 22nd January, 21:00 IST (You can check your timezone here).

The problems are prepared by me, Ujjwal cooldude1103 Goel, Mayank mynk322.0 Padia and Ali AliTavassoly Tavassoly.

Also huge thanks to Arpa for coordinating and testing the round.

To make the challenge more interesting, we will add problems to the contest in this order:

  • Day 0: Problem 1, Problem 2, Problem 3
  • Day 1: Problem 4, Problem 5
  • Day 4: Problem 6, Problem 7
  • Day 6: Problem 8

As usual, here are the prizes for the top three contestants:

  • $100 Amazon gift card
  • $75 Amazon gift card
  • $50 Amazon gift card

Hope to see you on the leaderboard!

Good luck everybody! Hope you all gain a positive rating Δ in this round!

  • Vote: I like it
  • +16
  • Vote: I do not like it

Comments Comments (34)
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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +1 Vote: I do not like it

Auto comment: topic has been updated by lucky_21 (previous revision, new revision, compare).

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +48 Vote: I do not like it

I hope scoring for challenge problem would not break several days into contest putting people with worst score on top

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it 0 Vote: I do not like it

Hope everyone will enjoy the contest.

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

What is happening? Why aren't problems showing up for me? Is anyone facing the same problem?

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it 0 Vote: I do not like it

I can't see any problem under "problems", but I can reach the statements (and submit) of all of them from the scoreboard. Is this intended?

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3 years ago, # |
← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +41 Vote: I do not like it

I haven't tried one of these before. The website just seems kind of...broken? Is everyone experiencing this?

  • Problems are not visible on the problem list
  • Doesn't seem like problems were added day by day as they were supposed to
  • Can't highlight text on problems page
  • The copy sample input/output button doesn't work
  • When clicking the download button for the sample test case, it's not formatted correctly (there are extra whitespaces)
  • By default, the compile and test button uses this incorrectly formatted test case.
  • When getting partially accepted, the button that says to copy input test case (for what is supposed to be a visible test case) just doesn't work (i.e. error logged in browser console)
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    3 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +22 Vote: I do not like it

    I was told that item #3 is intended to prevent googling…

    Overall, HE is a place with people of a unique mindset behind it, so try your best to stay calm.

    For example, they consider copying problems from CodeForces perfectly normal, even though some participants copy-paste solutions from CF (￣д￣)

    Btw, would "contributor" Arpa want to comment on the above case?

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      3 years ago, # ^ |
        Vote: I like it +20 Vote: I do not like it
      • I'm not responsible for technical problems. Even I don't have access to manage the contest when it goes live.
      • My hands are really tied: for example, I can't set the date and time of contests, I can't change the number of problems or number of contests in the month or style of the contests. Even, recently, I can't select all of the problems of a contest from one setter.
      • There are a lot of technical problems that have side effects on contests and I'm asking for 3 years to fix it and a small amount of them changed. For example, partial scoring, comments system, adding pypy, etc.
      • About repetitive problems: As you maybe know, I solved ~5k problems in my programming history. If I deduce that some problem is repetitive, I'll not accept it. But there are two things to consider:
      • Our contests are more "Educational" than competitive, so it's not a big problem to have repetitive problems.
      • I didn't solve and I can't remember all of the problems in the world. Even on Codeforces, it happens that some problems are deduced to be copied.

      The last word: HackerEarth is not Codeforces. They are very different in the way they make money and keep alive. Codeforces is made by competitive programmers, for competitive programmers. But HackerEarth is made to make it simple for companies to hire and programmers to join companies.

      The goal of contests on HackerEarth is to just make a community. This ensures that HackerEarth has always a lot of programmers that know it and maybe will use it to join companies.

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        3 years ago, # ^ |
        ← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +29 Vote: I do not like it

        I only wanted to ask about reusing problems, but thanks for the detailed response. Maybe other people in the thread will find it helpful.

        Perhaps I explained the source of my fury somewhat obscurely, so let me try again. I believe that you didn't remember or even haven't solved that particular problem. However, I do not believe that whoever proposed it has come up with it themselves. Let's be real: numbers with "at most seven divisors" do not occur that often in statements.

        it's not a big problem to have repetitive problems

        It is a big problem because it violates item 2 of Codeforces materials usage license:

        You must not use ... materials of the problems ... to publish tasks in open sources supporting automatic testing ...

        Besides this formal violation, I find it unethical to omit original authors when reusing problems, i.e. the page on HE has no references to Mohammed Ehab whatsoever but instead has you and some random dude as contributors. I would want to tag the dude, but I couldn't find their cf profile.

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          3 years ago, # ^ |
            Vote: I like it +8 Vote: I do not like it

          This is not the first time Hackereath contest has repeated problems. Once I participated in Hackereath May Circuits '20.

          Let's look at the last 3 problems-

          1 Shortest Path Revisited = Asked in Sprinklr hiring challenge before (same author oops)

          2 Or = D — Another good title here

          3 Different Subarray Sum Problem = L. Scientist Ayoub (B)

          3 copied problems in a single contest. Do HE admins even verify if problems are copied?

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          3 years ago, # ^ |
            Vote: I like it +4 Vote: I do not like it

          However, I do not believe that whoever proposed it has come up with it themselves.

          It's not true always. I have counterexamples. Although with such a huge similarity, the probability is very low. I'm asking the setter if he copied problems or not. A year ago, we banned someone from problem setting who was copying problems from other judges.

          It is a big problem because it violates item 2 of Codeforces materials usage license:

          By "it's not a big problem to have repetitive problems" I don't mean it's ok that setters copy problems from Codeforces. I mean It's ok to have classical problems, especially as we have a contest Data Structures and Algorithms.

          I asked the setter — Kritagya — for description about the problem you mentioned. In the future, if you faced copy problems on HE, please inform me by email. Thanks.

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            3 years ago, # ^ |
              Vote: I like it -14 Vote: I do not like it

            Kritagya said that he didn't copy this problem and it was unintentional. Can you find other problems by this setter that seems copied?

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        3 years ago, # ^ |
          Vote: I like it +11 Vote: I do not like it
        About repetitive problems: As you maybe know, I solved ~5k problems in my programming history. If I deduce that some problem is repetitive, I'll not accept it.

        Do you even take efforts to try find the problems online? I'm pretty sure it won't take much effort to find since your authors don't even change the statements.

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        3 years ago, # ^ |
        ← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it 0 Vote: I do not like it

        why not ask someone as tester, in the past there are high rated testers, who can also check the problems. It has been disappeared when u came.

        You are too greedy take all responsibility (more $$$?) and argue that u are limited.

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          3 years ago, # ^ |
            Vote: I like it +10 Vote: I do not like it

          Put a comment with your real handle, we can talk more.

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      3 years ago, # ^ |
      ← Rev. 3   Vote: I like it +6 Vote: I do not like it

      Arpa participated in the contest from which the problem you've mentioned is and also has 4 wrong submissions in contest for that problem and later upsolved it. How can he not remember it (that's not a very old contest)?

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +3 Vote: I do not like it

    Honestly, after participated several contests in HE, I got familiar with these special features(bugs) and became enjoying them weirdly. :P

    I consider HE as CP+CTF. Solving problems is not the unique purpose now. You need guess a lot of things, including the real input format, the real required output, and the real leaderboard. Have fun.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +1 Vote: I do not like it

I cannot access the link now: January Circuits '22

Please help.

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3 years ago, # |
← Rev. 3   Vote: I like it +27 Vote: I do not like it

Is there any logical explanation for not updating the Leaderboard in the last 24 hours, and for the list of problems in the problems section to be empty, even though clicking the problem link from the Leaderboard leads to the problem page correctly?

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3 years ago, # |
← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +10 Vote: I do not like it

Is the contest still rated? The leaderbord seems to be frozen and it is not under live contests (link is dead).

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
    ← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +8 Vote: I do not like it

    Also, there seems to be problem with the Approximation problem(Tennis Tournament) as my score improved to 100.0 from 99.99 but it is not reflected in the leaderboard.

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3 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +2 Vote: I do not like it

I informed the technical team about the problem just now and received this response instantly: "The team is already aware, Arpa. Thank you for letting us know".

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
    ← Rev. 7   Vote: I like it 0 Vote: I do not like it

    I am getting a new neat GUI for the contest page, which is worth expressing gratitude and appreciation to the technical team for their fruitful endeavors. However, the new GUI is missing links LEADERBOARD and ANALYTICS. Furthermore, the new GUI is missing the COMMENTS section in each problem.

    I hope that these useful missing sections were not eliminated from the contest GUI intentionally, even though it was not possible to get feedback from the admin team through the COMMENTS section about some issues in the problem statements in the past few months.

    Best wishes

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3 years ago, # |
← Rev. 3   Vote: I like it -7 Vote: I do not like it

https://www.hackerearth.com/practice/basic-programming/implementation/basics-of-implementation/practice-problems/algorithm/tic-tac-toe-thingy-7ce8b17b/

The model solution is not correct for the statement. You didn't correct it, fix model solution and rejudge. Did you read the tourist's comment?

You are afraid compensation is deduced if the task has problem right?

No response, don't tell me you don't read feedback in problems.

You are admin and the site lacks of proposals, then u bring your problem to top-coder to earn more compensation, not nice admin. You don't want the site be better, just for your-self and fool HE.

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +1 Vote: I do not like it

    As mentioned earlier, come with your real handle and we can talk. But let me use this place to mention: we have more than 200 problems in our queue.

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3 years ago, # |
← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +9 Vote: I do not like it

Is anyone able to see the leaderboard after the contest? I can't seem to find it anywhere

Also, how can we find out who the 3 winners are?

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    3 years ago, # ^ |
    ← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it 0 Vote: I do not like it

    Scoreboard is here — it seems the competition has been changed from competitive to a hiring challenge, but I'm not sure what this means. Also, most of the submission times are gone and replaced with a 0

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