wanbo's blog

By wanbo, history, 9 years ago, In English

Hello Coders,

Excited to share that Accel Hack is here! The coding contest commences on 06th June 2015 at 10:30 UTC, and will run for 4 hours. You can sign-up for the Accel Contest here.

Please note that contest is open to all for participation, but only contestants from India are eligible for following prizes:

  • Exciting career opportunities with fast-growing Indian start-ups from Accel Partners' portfolio.
  • Great prizes — MacBook Pro, iPhones, iPads.
  • Chance to pitch your business ideas to Accel Partners.

GL&HF,
Wan Bo

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9 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +45 Vote: I do not like it

"Contest is open to all, but only Indian contestents are eligible for prizes." :(((

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    9 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +28 Vote: I do not like it

    Come on, and what about enjoying solving interesting problems and participation in a good competition? People say that it is priceless :)

    What is really sad — the fact that given contest overlaps with few other events (Yandex.Algorithm, Looksery Cup).

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      9 years ago, # ^ |
        Vote: I like it +30 Vote: I do not like it

      I dunno, it doesn't feel right to read "Hey, there's this contest with awesome prizes, but the prizes aren't for you! In fact, the contest isn't for you either, since it overlaps with practically everything!". If this announcement was posted on an external site and only a link to it was given (which happens sometimes, ofc in unrelated situations), I'd suspect it's clickbaiting to increase traffic.

      The overlaps are also called "HR does it again!". One has to wonder what connection to competitive programming would be for someone who schedules a contest with not one, but two overlaps (three if I count CC Long Challenge for lulz), with not casual SRM / CF round things, but a unique round (shiny Pidgey) and a well-known tournament round. Obviously, such a person didn't intend to take part in either anyway (or didn't intend to watch over their own contest).

      Oh well. I read, I was disappointed, I forgot.

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        9 years ago, # ^ |
          Vote: I like it +5 Vote: I do not like it

        I don't think it was made this way intentionally. When I told about this issue few days ago — it turned out that it is too late to make some changes in schedule; but at least those contests have different target audience.

        This announcement still makes sense. I believe that a lot of skilled coders from India will prefer HR to Looksery Cup, and most of them were not going to participate in Yandex anyway.

        You can always change things in a better way — check schedule for intersections between some contest and CF round/TC SRM/huge onsite/your favorite TV series. If found any, inform admins/organizers about it. From my experience — often they are not aware about it (it holds not only for HackerRank, but for a lot of other sites and contests also); and usually they are interested in resolving this issue. Nobody wants to lose a participants because of other contests, nobody wants to read damn, you scheduled it so badly again! things.

        And one more — in my case there's this contest with awesome prizes, but the prizes aren't for you! works for most of contest announcements :) You are getting used to it :)

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          9 years ago, # ^ |
          Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +5 Vote: I do not like it

          I'm aware that it's probably not intentional. You have a point that Indians may prefer this contest, although I'd say it'd be the case for less skilled coders :D (who don't have a high chance for anything in the 2 contests due to Yandex's format and presumably strong competition on CF, but may be trying to appeal to an Indian company). Swistakk's point is valid, though — it's unnecessarily underwhelming.

          check schedule for intersections between some contest and CF round/TC SRM/huge onsite/your favorite TV series

          Favourite TV series: spot the odd one / false equivalence. Competitive programmers have various hobbies and you can't avoid clashing with all of them; however, they all have a single common hobby — competitive programming (unsurprisingly). The amount of effort spent for avoiding clashes with non-CP things would be massive and is much better spent trying to make one's own round better.

          The effort spent checking at least HR calendar (something something irony) or Coder's Calendar to see that a contest is already scheduled, on the contrary, is minimal. If I took it on myself to check all overlaps, chances are high that I wouldn't be listened to most of the time (just like it was when I used to do it) and I'd have to take what would otherwise be distributed over many other people all on myself, which would at least distract me from other things. And I'm not anyone's personal army, anyway.

          I can't do everything. I can type a wall of text fairly quickly. I can defend a view "it's not good to schedule overlapping contests and use baity titles". I can't take part in all contests due to schedule limitations of unrelated things, but that's my problem and I'm trying to optimise my schedule as much as I can (yesterday's SRM, I competed in a train and tested/submitted when the train was passing through an area where its wifi worked). When I have to choose, I often evaluate cost and value and try to optimise, dismissing what simply isn't worth it, sometimes because picking one thing breaks a combo (round trips make for great combos, for example :D). Sometimes, I choose badly, so I'm also trying to optimise the possible amount of fail as well. Anyway... your suggestion simply doesn't fit into my things to do.

          And one more — in my case there's this contest with awesome prizes, but the prizes aren't for you! works for most of contest announcements :)

          I have different experience. In most contests I'm aware of (which is: regular rounds + what gets announced here), I am eligible for prizes. I don't tend to win any and I don't compete for them (except t-shirts, which ties to the good feeling of success), but I still am eligible. What type contests are you talking about, specifically?

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      9 years ago, # ^ |
        Vote: I like it +3 Vote: I do not like it

      Nope. What is really, really sad is that I slept through all three of them. (Phone battery died when I was sleeping so alarm didn't go off. Just my luck)

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        9 years ago, # ^ |
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        Do what I do and set several alarm clocks on your computer(s) and phone(s). Alternatively, get someone to wake you up.

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9 years ago, # |
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*

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    9 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +3 Vote: I do not like it

    Since unlikely you will win prize, and as ratingvalue(codeforces) > ratingvalue(hackerrank) nothing surprising

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9 years ago, # |
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Can someone plz explain their approach for problem 'Easy Strings'

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    9 years ago, # ^ |
    Rev. 2   Vote: I like it 0 Vote: I do not like it

    It can be solved in linear time using Z-Function.

    If you have an index i such that Z[i] >= i, this means that the third pattern YYW occurs and the second Y starts at that index. Similarly, if i + Z[i] == string.size(), there is a suffix starts at index i that matches a prefix, which is the second pattern YXY. The first pattern is similar to the third one. Just reverse the string and do the same. Also don't forget to handle the "non-empty" condition.

    Here is my code.

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9 years ago, # |
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In the problem 'Destroy' , I counted vertices which are not Articulation Points. If it's even Alex wins otherwise Artur.
But I got 83.33 score (not complete 100). What test cases I missed? Or there is some other approach to the problem?

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    9 years ago, # ^ |
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    Some people did it like — if Total nodes even = Alex wins
    otherwise Artur wins. Can someone explain how it reduced to such easy soln?

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      9 years ago, # ^ |
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      Hint : Notice that in any connected graph, we can remove some vertex to get another connected graph. So, its just like the game is played on some coins, each one picking one coin in a move and game ends when there are no coins left.

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9 years ago, # |
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Approach to solve Picture Rotation please.!!