I request you all to answer the following questions based on only your experience and nothing else.
During a contest, when you get a solution to a problem, do you actually prove the solution to be true or just use some test cases and check if the solution works correctly? I feel the latter answer is obvious but I would still like to take a poll. The reason for asking this question is because sometimes, I am just not confident enough on my intuition and feel like I am missing some test case which can prove it wrong. Also, I am not that good when things come to prove something though I understand the proofs done in the editorials. Lastly, when I submit it (my intuitive solution) and I receive a WA, it demoralizes me to such an extent that I feel I should quit the contest immediately.
In a greedy vs dp scenario, how do you judge if the problem can be solved greedily or not? I am new to dynamic programming (though I am practicing it for the past few months) and often get confused when encountering such scenarios. The reason for this confusion is mainly because of not being able to find a test case that fails the greedy solution. I also understand that constraints are important in analyzing the type of problem and the first thing I do is analyze the time complexity of the dp solution. Then I think of a greedy solution. But most of the time, I fail to optimize my dp solution or believe it to be a greedy problem and receive a TLE or WA respectively. Hence, I need your help here.
How do you all stay motivated, especially in a scenario where your past 5-10 contests have gone bad? I am currently going through it. I have no aim whatsoever regarding my rating but my only aim is to be able to solve 4-5 problems (Div2A — D) in a contest as fast as I can and increase this count with time. But for the past few contests, I was either able to solve 4 problems but I was comparatively late (compared to my peers) or I solved fewer problems that too after a series of WAs and TLEs. What do you do in such conditions?
Do you keep an eye on standings? I understand looking at the dashboard at regular intervals, as there can be a problem with increasing submissions ahead of what I am trying to solve (like contest #643 where D was easier than C). But do you look at the standings? My general protocol is to look at the standings after I solve 3 problems. This usually tells me how fast I should be to solve the fourth problem (again, compared to my peers).
Do you read all problem statements before attempting one? If yes, how are you able to think of a solution/idea immediately to rate a problem easy or difficult? I have seen many people practicing this and I do not understand how they do it. For example, consider contest #643 again. There must be a few people who read D and attempted D before C. This led others to think that maybe D is easier than C and hence the chain. But how do I identify such things? If tomorrow the submissions are invisible, how should I check if the problem ahead of the current problem was easier than it should be at that hierarchy?
I request you all to answer as honestly as possible, even if it means throwing hard truth directly on my face. A very big thank you to all and to MikeMirzayanov for this platform.
