Something really bad that could have happened with me was prevented, with a stroke of crazy fucking luck. I thank god for that, and I have decided to give out some help to other as a part of thanks.
I will personally help 5 people in comments asking their doubts in anything CP/Math related — any problem or anything in my capacity. (Based on my capacity. If a red asks me something crazy, I am sorry.)
I have been expert, but I lost touch with CP recently. I really love maths. I think I might be able to help people <= specialist.
Feel free to downvote, I dont care (Maybe you should, so that folks dont start a trend with these kind of blogs) . I just want to give out help and earn Karma and keep god's blessing on me. (Sorry I am lonely, This was one of the better idea I had to help others)
What careers like CP or Project Euler type problem solving can I pursue that is not research and gives out good money?
I dont know the answer to that, other folks please chime in. I am not sure there is a feasible career like this open for everyone.
A few things I can think of — CP trainers (Need to be really good and popular and be in a place where there is a demand), Quant firms ( I have heard it involves hardcore problem solving, and gives crazy money. But you need to be really good to crack their interviews ) , SDE at big companies like Google (I guess <5% of your work will revolve around problem solving, but it pays good.
Wait I forgot about AI. I think AI research companies have good amount of algorithmic and problem solving related work. I hope they will pay good.
You can directly ask anything. Example : why my code for problem X give WA or explain my doubt X about the solution/problem. I will try to answer it based on my capacity
Take a look at my performance, I think I slowly climbing up but I really wanted to see a breakout instead. What should I do to reach expert swiftly?
Also should I train CP outside of CF? (What's the up and down sides for training outside CF)
A few question to better understand you.
Have you partially solved/considered solving CSES problemset ?
Have you trained DSA and Algorithm outside CF ? Like CLRS book , or a College courses of DSA/Algo ?
Have you solved "standard" algorithmic problems ? For example how much of these standard problems on Leetcode you think you already know of https://leetcode.com/problemset/?listId=wpwgkgt&page=1&difficulty=HARD
What limits you in your contest performances among "Limiting factor categorization" below ?
What do you think are your weak areas ? (Dp/ counting problems / graph and trees / adhoc question )
--
Silly MistakeImplementation mistakes. Too silly--
Implementation MistakeImplementation mistakes.--
Slow implementationCame up with solutions quick enough, and did implementation withoug much mistakes but took more time that you should, so either you solved to slower than your potential, or couldn't solve it in contest due to that.--
Unthinkable SolutionCould not think of the solutions--
Slow Coming SolutionsWas slowly approaching solution, but could finalize solution before end. Or finalized solution but took too much time, so that could not implement.--
Bad SolutionComing up with a correct but bad solution, while not taking too much time in coming up with the solution — causing either implementation becoming too hard to manage, or implementation taking too much time.--
Wrong SolutionComing up with a solution, which you think will work, but its actually was wrong. Causing you to spend time implementing, and then debugging WA, and then finding out it was wrong.--
Misunderstanding ProblemsMissing something in the problem, making wrong assumptions,I've background of OI academics before, so let's say I have learn/solved all the standard stuff before in pascal/C++.
I've comeback to CP recently for 1 year. But I find that I rather to code in python nowadays so I start comeback slow. Both to get used to python in CP and getting back to CP by python.
I do think I have a few weak areas like dp, constructive algo, combinatorics (I solved them sometimes but inconsistently). Also I haven't learn any type of segment trees. (My data structures is in very basic level, but still I can solve graph problem, a few query related problem by sparse table... but not segment trees — If I detect they're needed I'll just skip and read the next problem)
Group of limit factor categorization: bad/wrong solution, silly mistakes, misunderstanding, unthinkable solution (I've sorted them as the frequency I met)
About implementation mistake, I rarely have them or it's CF that's try to limit the implementation itself. As I see all the problems are very short-coded one. So the time spend for debug is not really that much
A few lower rated problems than my current rating (900-1300) but I can't solve it and needed Editorial:
"Also should I train CP outside of CF? (What's the up and down sides for training outside CF)"
Downsides in my opinion — Not much. One possible thing could be that you have too many things to juggle together. Or maybe some sites have bad UI/bad community/bad problem quality.
Upsides — You experience style of problems and contest. Atcoder for example gives many standard-ish problems, while codeforces have majorly ad hoc problems now. Some atcoder problems are very good from educational perspective(they will help you improve), but they are too standard-ish to ever appear on codeforces contests.
Also if your goal is ICPC, you need to practice outside CF. CF doesn't have that much geometry and heavy implementation problems in contests, compared to how frequent they are on ICPC.
I would say my answer on this is just my opinion, I wouldn't consider it as a good answer.
I see that you have problem with being consistent. Some recent contest (edu 174, round 999, round 1002) , you didn't Solve C and took too much time in B. Unexpected based on your current rating. But since " bad/wrong solution, silly mistakes, misunderstanding" are the major problem, I think just more practice with same method would be good.
But I think there might be an issue on how hard you try problems yourself. Whether you give up and check editorial to quickly .
Some more questions —
Around how many problems among the 136(1400+ difficutly) you would guess you solved completely on your own / solve with some hints from editorial / solved by fully seeing the editorial ?
I've checked some of my history and dish out some stats that I self solved without editorials:
About whether to read the editorials, If my mind goes to a dead end in practice, I spend extra 30 minutes to think, still stuck -> editorials. I find that I have many blind spots so editorial actually help, but yeah should I give it more time to think? I really don't know.
In live contest I'll try another approach or patch it up or skip. Really kinda random for now as I don't have a clear strategy and experimenting them out at times.
can you review my id and suggest me how can i improve further.......
What limits you in your contest performances most of the time among "Limiting factor categorization" below ?
What do you think are your weak areas ? (Dp/ counting problems / graph and trees / adhoc question / etc )
I see that you have solved 50 problems of 1600 difficulty and 38 problems of 1700 difficulty. How many of these 88 problems you solved completely on your own / solve with some hints from editorial / solved by fully seeing the editorial ?
--
Silly MistakeImplementation mistakes. Too silly--
Implementation MistakeImplementation mistakes.--
Slow implementationCame up with solutions quick enough, and did implementation withoug much mistakes but took more time that you should, so either you solved to slower than your potential, or couldn't solve it in contest due to that.--
Unthinkable SolutionCould not think of the solutions--
Slow Coming SolutionsWas slowly approaching solution, but could finalize solution before end. Or finalized solution but took too much time, so that could not implement.--
Bad SolutionComing up with a correct but bad solution, while not taking too much time in coming up with the solution — causing either implementation becoming too hard to manage, or implementation taking too much time.--
Wrong SolutionComing up with a solution, which you think will work, but its actually was wrong. Causing you to spend time implementing, and then debugging WA, and then finding out it was wrong.--
Misunderstanding ProblemsMissing something in the problem, making wrong assumptions,most 1600's i solved myself, about half of 1700's i solved myself. iam doing good with dp and graph. i face misunderstanding of problems most of the time.and silly mistakes (very few times), some times i even comeup with wrong solution.
"i face misunderstanding of problems most of the time" This can be improved a lot by practice.
Since you dont have major issue with "Unthinkable solutions" and you are solving "hard-for-you" problems yourself. I think you are doing good. I don't have anything to suggest for now.
This problem Fine Triplets is on my upsolving list. Can you explain me the intuition behind FFT/NTT to solve this problem. How to spot if something is FFT and how we solve this one without any pre-written code from scratch(only pre-req I have is I watched videos by Reducible, Veritasium and 3Blue1Brown) :)
Since I haven't studied FFT, I cant help you there. I have 3-4 upsolves pending on FFT. So I will be studying FFT soon. Once I understand, and implement it, and solve a few problems. I will probably get back to you.
My thinking is that its pretty advanced topic, and below CM, anyone would better focus of DP, Maths, Graphs & Trees, and Data structures.
you basically want all possible combination of 2*b = a+c , so in other words if you are able to compute all possible values of a+c in the array, you will be able to check for each a+c , how many 2*b exist, and to calculate all possible a+c , you will need FFT, you will keep all the values in the array as powers , and then multiply the polynomial with itself, thus getting all possible combinations of a+c as the powers of the new polynomial, this way you will be able to calculate the number of b which satisfy the given constraint. It's a really nice question. I also wasn't able to solve it during contest unfortunately :(
One of the problem I have no idea how to solve (unthinkable). But it seems interesting and very classical at the same time.
can you view my id and help me.i know I am weak in greedy problems.
Feels thats for now you are sort of stuck at pupil, but its only a problem if you aren't able to solve problems on your own.
Try to understand what limits you in your contest performances most of the time among "Limiting factor categorization" below ?
If its like misunderstandings / silly mistakes / slow or bad implementation / slow coming solutions — then you would improve by practicing more. No need to worry.
If its more like unthinkable solutions and wrong solutions. Then you might need to change the way you practice.
I see that you have solved ~80 problems of 1600+ difficulty. How many of these 88 problems you solved completely on your own / solve with some hints from editorial / solved by fully seeing the editorial ? If you are seeing the editorial too much / too early, than it might be a problem
--
Silly MistakeImplementation mistakes. Too silly--
Implementation MistakeImplementation mistakes.--
Slow implementationCame up with solutions quick enough, and did implementation withoug much mistakes but took more time that you should, so either you solved to slower than your potential, or couldn't solve it in contest due to that.--
Unthinkable SolutionCould not think of the solutions--
Slow Coming SolutionsWas slowly approaching solution, but could finalize solution before end. Or finalized solution but took too much time, so that could not implement.--
Bad SolutionComing up with a correct but bad solution, while not taking too much time in coming up with the solution — causing either implementation becoming too hard to manage, or implementation taking too much time.--
Wrong SolutionComing up with a solution, which you think will work, but its actually was wrong. Causing you to spend time implementing, and then debugging WA, and then finding out it was wrong.--
Misunderstanding ProblemsMissing something in the problem, making wrong assumptions,I have the similar problems. i read editorials too much and think less. after reading the problems, i open the editorials quickly nearly without thinking because i think the problem is too strange and i cannot solve it.
Sorry for my poor English.
I mostly got Bad solution or Implementation mistake. I rarely thought wrong solution and wrong answers. All my wrong answers due to simple implementation mistakes. Also I solved most of the problems my self it's more towards 60% own self, 30% small hints, 10% seeing editorial. If I solve a problem with complete editorial I did not submit it, I left it to think about it later times.