I have been practicing problems on various sites such as UVA, Spoj, Codeforces and codechef. However, my issue is that I am never able to get more than 10 problems done in a day. It usually takes me an hour to understand the problem, and then understand the concept it involves, before actually getting down to writing the actual code.
Is this normal? How many problems do you all do per day? I just wanted to check, just to be sure that I am on track or I need to improve.
Please don't downvote, this is a legitimate question.
If you are not a good ranked holder in codeforces say an expert or something you will most likely be down voted. That is how it is.
But I have asked a serious question. I didnt want to message any red coder personally, so I just posted another blog.
10 is more than enough if you just don't paste other solutions. And if you are not doing that you will improve for sure.
But sometimes I am unable to solve the problem even after 10 WAs.. what should I do then?
I personally skip that problem and redo it after few days. Sometimes this works idk how but it surely does work
yeah lol, all of 'em are racist here, no value for gray and green :(
Correction — *ratist not racist lol
Focus on :- "Quality over quantity". Don't stress yourself over the number of problems you're solving everyday.
But there must a metric to measure quality too, don't you agree?
In my opinion, metrics like how many problems you solved or how many hours a day you solved problems are quite superficial and you might end up wasting majority of your time procrastinating by solving too easy problems just to maintain these metrics. Quite a few people advise solving problems about 200-300 rating points above your rating for effective practice in this regard, and I agree with them too.
Seeing that your issue is understanding the problem and the concept, it might be better to work on your comprehension skills and brush up some math simultaneously. And if you feel like you know very few concepts, you should check out this book.
Going through your submission history, as far as contest performance is concerned, it seems like a good idea would be to get into the habit of proving your solutions (at least intuitively) before you code them up, and try to get AC in one go. Being more careful also makes you faster in contests over time, since you don't waste lots of time coding wrong ideas and get an intuition about what works, and makes you more comfortable with problem solving in general.
Hello, thank you for your reply, it was indeed informative. The reason I said that a metric is important is that you could be solving maybe 5 problems a day, which you think are difficult, but for others, they are a piece of cake. This is an extremely undesirable situation.
If a problem is difficult for someone, then it is worth solving for them. This is the same as telling someone unable to solve Div. 2 B problems not to solve them since they are a piece of cake for Tourist or Benq. If someone solves 5 problems in a day that are difficult for them, but easy for someone else it doesn't take away from the fact they solved 5 problem difficult FOR THEM. Difficulty is in the eye of the beholder.
I think my record is 15 over 1000 difficulty problems in one day.
I see you have solved a lot but try to solve problems above your difficulty level..It will definitely help you
I've started doing that lately
Believe me, thats like a very big number in a day, if you look into the stats, that means you would be doing about 300 problems a month and that means you would be doing about 3600 problems in year.
I think there are probably 3 cases possible here
You are very determined person and you know what you are doing and then you are practicing a correct gradiant of difficulty level.
You are doing very hard problems and dont know what you are doing and just in the end copy pasting solutions.
You are doing very easy problems that are not helping you in anyway.
If the case is first, congrats you are soon going to be one of the best here. However if the case if other 2 options then you should consider taking problem a little high than your current level (here by level I mean the problem that you are comfortable doing). Believe me 10 is a very big number for a day.
69 problems
If you are joking, please let me remind you that this is a serious blog, not a shitpost or a joke. If you are not, 69 is a huge number, and I am unable to solve more than 10 problems, let alone 30 or 60.
ok boomer
and btw im expert watch your mouth newbie
Why you gotta be so rude to the guy, man he just wants to get some actual help. So many people on this platform have a messed up mindset thinking that they are so much better than the other person just because they have a higher rating smh.
why you gotta be so serious? that was clearly a joke lmao
Oh shit I did not even read your actual comment, I have only read the bit where you say "watch you mouth newbie" and I thought you were like being egoistic or smth oops
i think it's common case , i practice everyday sometimes i can solve it about 5 problem anthor day i can solve one problem , keep practice you will grow up , don't give up
this video may help you to get rid of such questions.
It looks like lots of people have already offered their opinions but since this is the Internet I will offer mine as well.
Doing 10 problems in a day is too many. If you are even able to solve 6 problems in a day you need to do harder problems. Also, if it really takes an entire hour to understand and then mindsolve a problem, that means you're aiming to do at least 10 hours of CP a day, which ... is a lot?
I currently don't do any problems each day (I'm taking a break from CP to focus on a different project), but even when I was focusing on CP, I doubt I solved more than 4-5 problems in a single day. I also did a lot of that in-contest or in-virtual (I am really terrible at motivating myself to upsolve).
I don't know your situation well enough to offer specific advice but here's my experience I guess.
Thank you, your advice and experience are extremely valuable. That being said, why do you say 10 hours is too much for CP? Isn't it correct that the more you practice, the better you would be? It holds for math, and I assumed it would hold correct for competitive programming too.
If you truly believe you can stay focused for 10 hours every day, and you have the time and motivation to do so, then sure, go ahead. But that is definitely something I would not be able to do, both because I don't think I would have the mental stamina, and because it would mean dropping everything outside of CP.
Give VC everyday. Value for time and helps in improving speed and accuracy.
PS: I saw you gave only 5 contests bro, give every contest possible. You can't improve rating without giving contests:/, you will be stuck otherwise as contests,either real or virtual, improve your problem solving skills(doing random problems does not). Do specific problems only when you learn new topics. You learn new topics when you give contests and upsolve what you couldn't do.