ChickenInKitchen's blog

How to read editorials ?
By ChickenInKitchen, history, 7 years ago, In English

Hello guys . I have a problem with reading editorials . I dont know how to read them . once I read the editorial I dont learn from it I just understand how to solve that problem . I feel like its an idea to solve just this problem and cant use it on others . does anyone has any suggestion ?

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7 years ago, # |
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7 years ago, # |
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I guess it is quite normal situation, it usually happens me when i read editorials of Codeforces div.2 C/D problems. I suggest to try harder problems that require more out-of-box thinking like div.1 C/D and try problems from different judges(preferably atcoder.jp).

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    7 years ago, # ^ |
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    well I once asked a red coder and he told me to read one line of editorial and try to solve it and if you cant another line and ... but it didnt work for me

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7 years ago, # |
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In my opinion, when you read a problem and find a way to solve it, that's because of your reflection. You have this reflection by having long time enough solving some similar problems before. When you meet a hard problem, you spend a long time to think about it, but can not find the anwser, i think that because you just try to solve it by your current reflection. So don't feel sad when you can't solve a hard problem. It's just because you don't have enough reflection (knowledges) for it, not because you're weak and you can't use what you read in the tutorials. So you should practice something new you have learnt, again and again to improve your reflection.

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7 years ago, # |
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Use your eyes maybe, they are there for a use. Hope this Helps! :)

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4 years ago, # |
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I feel the same, I'm worried if this is the right way to do it

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4 years ago, # |
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If you cannot understand the editorial, read the comments. Sometimes 1 paragraph comments are 100x more helpful than a 3 paragraph editorial.

Also, many times, the ideas that are used in an editorial may not be used together as a whole "package", but they may be dissected and used to solve sub-problems of "new" problems that you solve in the future. E.g. I once used MO's algorithm with updates to solve a sub-problem that would otherwise require segment tree with treap.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    Its not about not understanding ! Its about how to read the editorial so u can think about it at the same time too . I meant not to read the tutorial completely and just read some parts of it so you can get hints on solving it

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      3 years ago, # ^ |
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      you can check your friend's solution, and try to understand that code. I hope that will work for you because I do the same. because you are having code and you have to find the logic they used.

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4 years ago, # |
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This blog is 2 years old but here goes nothing:

To be honest, I don't think this is the right question to ask, you are not to blame for not being able to understand the editorial. The majority of the editorials are really hard to understand because the authors most likely assume that the reader knows some piece of information and therefore decide not to explain it well or even mention it AT ALL, the authors are also not to blame for the quality of the editorial as I don't think they get paid much to write lengthy editorials where every step in the solution is thoroughly explained.

Thankfully there are those people who devote some of their time to carefully re-explain a solution in the comment section of the editorial, which I assume you already know of.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    I think "lengthy editorials where every step in the solution is thoroughly explained" are not necessarily better, because the core ideas of the problem will get lost in a sea of details. I've seen people make this mistake: assuming that their writeup is easier to understand because it "explains more". Maybe a better solution is a system of spoiler tags.

    Also, problems and therefore their editorials have target audiences. If you need a thorough explanation at every step and there are many such steps, then probably the problem is too hard for your current level. For example, I don't think authors should try to make Div2E editorials accessible to cyans, because it's really hard to do it without making it harder to understand for people to whom the editorial is actually meant.

    Of course I'm not saying that the editorials are always perfect. I've seen many that could've been written better.

    Anyway, this isn't even what OP is asking about. OP's problem isn't "I don't understand editorials", it is "I can't generalize the approaches in editorials to other problems".

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4 years ago, # |
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I am also having same question

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4 years ago, # |
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It would be great if editorials had hints and the actual editorial in separate spoiler tags. I feel you tend to learn more in this hint based approach. This also helps in understanding the intuition behind the solution better.

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