quaha's blog

Long-running competitions
By quaha, history, 21 month(s) ago, In English

I think it would be interesting if once a month, as well as the Div. 3 round, a special Div. 1 — Div. 2 round was held with a duration of 3-4 hours, so that everyone would have enough time to think about difficult tasks, and not just those who quickly completed most of them.

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21 month(s) ago, # |
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I think we wouldn't notice the difference. The difficult tasks are probably already there, but the LGMs can make one feel like they were really easy. Also, such a round would just shift the normal, as the top finishers would still anyway compete at break neck pace, as it's still a race. Besides, i guess inventing such harder problems is not an easy task. It takes time and expertise that only a few possess.

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    21 month(s) ago, # ^ |
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    He doesn't ask for harder problems, he asks for time to solve hard problems that are already in the contest

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21 month(s) ago, # |
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Time is directly proportional to cheating. As time increases cheating also increases. So, 2-hour duration is the best, I agree here also cheating is done but when compared it is least.

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    21 month(s) ago, # ^ |
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    Maybe, but if someone wants to cheat, he will have enough time to do it at the current duration of the rounds. I think that only few people will cheat from those who didn't do it at the usual duration of the round, because what's the point of solving the ordinary rounds in order to cheat on a long one, if it will be easier than the common round.

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21 month(s) ago, # |
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IT HAS NO END. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination

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    21 month(s) ago, # ^ |
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    Sorry, I didn't understand what you wanted to say. Could you express your thought more clearly, please?

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21 month(s) ago, # |
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CodeChef Starters contests (for example this) and Google KickStarts (for example this) have 3 hours duration. They indeed allow slower participants to have a realistic shot at solving higher difficulty problems during the contest time.

Additionally I would recommend AtCoder heuristic contests (for example this). That's 4 hours to solve just 1 problem. Though heuristic problems differ from what you can see in a typical algorithmic contest and these heuristic problems are much closer to what real software developers do as their everyday job.

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21 month(s) ago, # |
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This is a nice idea

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21 month(s) ago, # |
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It's worth mentioning that if you have this, you need to make at least the first problem super easy. Currently there's an interesting feature of the rating system which is that people who solve no problems don't lose elo, which means if you solve just the easiest problem with bad penalty, you'll be at the bottom of the scoreboard and lose elo, despite beating everyone who solved 0 problems.

So to avoid this, there needs to be at least one simple problem everyone can solve to see who is really participating in the contest.

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