felix-felicis's blog

Need some guidance
By felix-felicis, history, 4 years ago, In English

Hey everyone.Hope u all are doing fine.I need a little help as I am stuck at one particular rating.I am generally able to solve problems upto 1300 level although the math ones do take time.I have knowledge about basic data structures such as array, map,vector,string and set and use a bit of C++ stl but I do not have any idea about any higher data structure or algorithm such as graph tree or dp. I just know their names as I frequently see their name in the editorial:) Can someone tell me what to learn now and then how to proceed further.I really want to improve but am just unable to solve the 1400 tag questions.

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4 years ago, # |
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i dont know if im qualified to give advice but you should probably start out with bfs, dfs and dp(because these are used very often i think, like the use of dp in todays D problem)

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    to my experience dfs, bfs, dp are required for problems >= 1600 (at the lowest that is) and a very few 1500.

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      4 years ago, # ^ |
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      Do you really think ,nowadays solving problems with rating < 1600 will make you even cyan ? .Even pupils are solving 2-3 problems continuously and are still stuck at there level.

      For cyan/expert you should be able to solve 1800 below rating problems easily.

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        4 years ago, # ^ |
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        I disagree. solving problems upto 1800 "easily" would make you purple or near purple. For cyan being able to solve <=1600 is enough.

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4 years ago, # |
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You could've asked this from your main account. There is no need to feel low or ashamed if you don't know enough.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    There's no need, but often times posts like these get downvoted.

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4 years ago, # |
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It's very normal. This was just me a year back. I often would get really furious for being stuck for 3-4 months and then after 1.5 months I was blue and even I was suprised that I could get so well in so short time. No I didn't do anything special or learn any advanced thing. Keep patience, keep practicing and it is an automatic that you will experience improvement in near future.

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4 years ago, # |
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From my experience, I believe 1600 rating is consistently solving Div2A-C.

Div2A and Div2B are usually ad-hoc or greedy and have small bounds, so using any advanced data structure is likely overkill. I think there are no tricks to solving Div2AB except practice and familiarity with the types of problems and the language you use.

For Div2C, more complicated concepts such as graphs start to appear and I think it's good to know how to traverse graphs (dfs and bfs). dsu is also very useful yet simple but I don't know why it's not as popular. Other than being familiar with dealing with graphs, I think binary search, prefix sum array, classic algorithms such as kadane's, classic dp problems, and maybe ternary search and fenwick tree will be enough.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    imo solving Div2A-C won't keep you in 1600 if you're not fast enough.

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      4 years ago, # ^ |
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      It would if you don't go too slow with some WA. Even too slow would be fine if you don't get WA.

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