checkMate09's blog

By checkMate09, history, 8 years ago, In English

Hi Codeforces,
As far As we seen in the last rated Codeforces round as well as the educational one problems C
C. Pythagorean Triples
C. Magic Odd Square
can be solved by searching on google for common formulas or algorithms and solve them.
so I'm asking about the importance of this paradigm of problems in ACM contests or in general competitive programming.

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8 years ago, # |
Rev. 3   Vote: I like it +13 Vote: I do not like it

Around five-three months ago, a guy used an exact problem from ASC Training camp on TC. The problem was actually very popular that it was mentioned on Quora before, ( It had a detailed Editorial + code ). I think he even used the same sample test case if I remember correctly.

I did mention that in the blog here on CF of the SRM but for some reason I got heavily down voted. ( I did not use the solution it was actually Div 2 Hard, and not included in div1 problems).

Till this day, I've no idea how he did that. This thread made me remember the incident, so hence the post.

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8 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +11 Vote: I do not like it

Educational contests are about famous and classical problems, so you should expect some of them to be on the internet.

Otherwise no problem setter would like to set a problem that's "googlable" or that was used previously somewhere. Once I sat a problem and I remember spending a lot of time preparing the test data, But later I found a paper hidden somewhere on the internet on the same problem so I threw it away.

The point is, it's an accident and it happens and we shouldn't blame the author for that.

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8 years ago, # |
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I failed to google "Pythagorean Triples" problem though I spent half an hour on it. Could you please share a link to solution you found on Internet?

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8 years ago, # |
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Simply, it happens ! For me it is not so annoying as putting weak testcases :)