Mehrdad_Sohrabi's blog

By Mehrdad_Sohrabi, history, 5 years ago, In English

Hi everybody:)

Do you think these days most of the questions in contest are long and hard to understand? I think most of them have useless stories so it makes problems for those people who their English is not good as others

I hope lots of contests will have short questions that consists just important parts of question:)

Good luck:)

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5 years ago, # |
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You should try Atcoder Grand contest for short contest , then you will feel codeforces longs are better than AGC shorts

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5 years ago, # |
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Even if the problem statement is short, I sometimes experienced "difficult to read problem statement" when English grammar/vocabulary of them are difficult, or grammar in problem statement is lacking.

In contrast, some problem statement are easy to read even if there are stories in it, if they are only using easy and well-arranged English sentences.

And also, stories changes the difficulty of the problem. For example, AtCoder Beginner Contest 100 A — Happy Birthday! was the problem like "You are given integers $$$A$$$ and $$$B$$$. Determine if there is a value $$$x_0,x_1,\dots,x_{15}$$$ where $$$x_i \in [-1,0,1]$$$ and $$$|x_i + x_{(i + 1) \ mod \ 16}| \leq 1$$$ and $$$N(x_i = 1) = A$$$ and $$$N(x_i = -1) = B$$$." If the problem statement is written like this, it obviously increases the difficulty.

But some stories are difficulty increasers. One example is AtCoder Beginner Contest 106 D — AtCoder Express 2. If the question was like "You are given $$$M$$$ positive integers $$$l_i$$$ and $$$r_i$$$ where $$$l_i, r_i \leq 500$$$. You are given $$$Q$$$ queries given from two integers $$$p$$$ and $$$q$$$, asking the number of $$$i$$$ which holds $$$L_i \geq p$$$ and $$$R_i \leq q$$$." If the problem statement is written like this, even beginners can easily realize that it is 2D cumulative sum problem, but problem statement "hides" solution in this case.

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5 years ago, # |
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