_suri_'s blog

By _suri_, history, 4 years ago, In English

Hi guys, I want to ask you all about your practice techniques, How much time do you give to a particular problem ? lets say if I am stuck on div2 C problems then should I try more or just search for solutions ? and what really "stuck" is ? whats your strategy while solving problems ?

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4 years ago, # |
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Looking at your chart, I see that you have solved only 4 problems rated 900, and 3 problems rated 1000, which is very little. This shows that your average rating is around 850.

That being said, going after Div2C, is kind of too much, because usually Div2C is rated 1400 and above(which means it is 600 points more than your current rating).

I think you should not practice by Solving categories. I think it is better to solve by problem rating. An example would be your current average rating is around 800, I would try problems rated 1000.

with that, if you could not solve a problem within 2 hours, I think it is time to look for hints and finally editorials.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
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    Thank you for detailed analysis and sure I will put up next couple of months to atleast get to 1300~1500 level. btw what is better approach — solving problems and accordingly learning things which are needed to tackle that problem or first brush up the topics ?

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      4 years ago, # ^ |
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      If you are attempting problems <1400, I believe most of them would be ad-hoc.You wouln't need knowledge of any specific topics to solve them. Basic math, sure. But not any algorithms or tricks.

      Once you feel confident in them, I'd say it's a good idea to learn the basic topics before attempting further questions. I'm not against it, but I guess if you don't know the basic idea of the topic the problem is related to, it may seem a bit overwhelming. If you stumble upon a graph question without knowing about DFS, it may not be useful, even if it involves a trivial application.

      So you can keep learning about the basics of most topics, like binary search, DFS/BFS, classical DP, etc. while you attempt your ad-hoc ones currently. After that, increase the rating of your practice problems, and your new knowledge should come in handy.

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4 years ago, # |
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I like the feature "Solve later" on upsolve.me

This is, after reading and understanding the tutorial I do not type the code immediatly, but do it some days later.