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number1729's blog

Why making useless (?) stories for statements
By number1729, history, 4 hours ago, In English

Why do problem setters make a lot of stories for problems which are useless ? for example in problem 1292C - Xenon's Attack on the Gangs, the statement says " It's guaranteed that links are placed in such a way that each pair of gangs will be connected by exactly one simple path. " , in the other line says "This network contains exactly n−1 direct links, each of them connecting two gangs together. The links are placed in such a way that every pair of gangs is connected through a sequence of direct links." , which are properties of tree, and can just say the graph is a tree. I think the whole statement can be like : "You are given a tree of n vertices, What is maximum value of sum of mex(u, v) for 1<=u<=v<=n (I don't know how to write sigma ), If we assign each edge an integer from 0 to n-2 and each number should be assigned to exactly one edge and mex(u, v) return smallest non-negative integer that does not appear on any edge on simple path between u and v." I think if a person doesn't know what is a tree, He will not be able to solve it. Do stories have benefits for you ? are they fun for you ? ( sorry for my poor English )

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3 hours ago, # |
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I prefer atcoder like statements where they put a short story and then the formal statement of the problem. Even sometimes they just put the formal statement without anything

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118 minutes ago, # |
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Why does my brain think in shapes and sounds instead of giving me raw sensory intensity?

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102 minutes ago, # |
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I do like stories when they naturally provide the reason why the problem settings have to be exactly like the statements and why we want to get the answer for the problem.

For example, a problem may want us to maximize a number while minimizing another number. If we only have these formal conditions, misreading a single part of the statement can make us try a completely wrong problem for hours, trying to maximizing both numbers or maximizing a wrong number, etc. However, let's say the story explains that these numbers are the amount of scores of a game, and we want to maximize our score and minimize the opponent's score. In this case, it's hard to misread the statements because this makes it very intuitive of why we want to achieve the problem's goal.

Also, I think long stories are less preferred especially in CP compared to PS, because we don't have all day to read the problems with 50 lines of descriptions and translate to our native languages. Though, when we have no limit in time, reading the plot may also be fun itself if the story is well-written.

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    96 minutes ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +1 Vote: I do not like it

    Of course, not all stories are good and often they go nowhere, distracting the participants from the actual problem with not-so-related story lines. It doesn't mean we should always ban stories from statements. They just used stories in a wrong way.

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