DrSwad's blog

MathMash — Round 28
By DrSwad, 6 years ago, In English

Hello Codeforces!

I'm glad to announce that we will be having Round 28 of MathMash today at 17: 00 UTC. The round has been prepared by Snpushpita and DrSwad.

The round will consist of 8 problems, to be solved within 2 hours.

Points distribution for the problems are decided as 500-750-1250-1250-1750-2000-2500-3000

We're inviting you all to join us in the contest. Hopefully we'll have a fun and successful round.

A few details about the contest:

  • In order to participate in the contest, you need to register first. Kindly follow this link to do so. Registration deadline has been removed from the contests. So now, you can register at any time before the contest ends.

  • I know this announcement is being placed in a coding website, but unfortunately using computer programs for MathMash contests is not allowed. We are trying to reward users' math skills with high ratings as there are not many sites that do this yet. We also try our best to set up the problems in such a way that any trivial brute force approach isn't supposed to work (for the mediocre/difficult problems).

  • Time-penalty is applicable for the contest: Each problem is given an appropriate number of points, which will be visible when the round starts. Participants will gain that many points — the time penalty after successfully submitting to a particular problem. The later the problem submission occurs, the more points being deducted due to time penalty.

  • The round is rated; which means that if you participate in the contest, your rating will be updated at the end of the round based on your rank in it. But you won't be considered as participating in the round if you don't submit any answer at all, even if you're registered for the contest.

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6 years ago, # |
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< 1 hour to go

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6 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +14 Vote: I do not like it

This is the first MathMash I've done, and I like both the task and the system pretty much. I'd like to give my opinion about some things in the contest, and to give some suggestions. Thanks for the contest, by the way.

  • First of all, I think 10 tries per problem is too much. Let's take, for example, geometric problem (Bash it). We are given two sides, and we are to calculate the surface of something. If one was to solve the problem as fast as possible, he could've tried ab, ab/2, ab/4, 2ab, 4ab, and in 80% of the problems one of the above would actually be the solution. Restricting the amount of tries to 1(maybe 2), would solve this problem, at least I hope so.
  • Second thing, some of the problems are already well known, and probably easily googlable (for example, I've already heard of problem H before, and the harmonic series one is easily searchable for sure.
  • Third thing, for 3/4 problems, a one minute bruteforce could solve some actually interesting problem. Maybe a good thing to do is to just increase the constraints given in the task. For example, for first problem, it's extra easy to write a bruteforce which solves it, and if numbers were up to 10^15 or something, it wouldn't be as easy as it that. Same thing goes for Z2017 problem.

I know that using computer programs isn't allowed, but if you are trying to make a more serious platform, maybe one could consider changing some things in order for this wonderful idea to become even better.

Yeah, I know that the point of the competition is not to figure out how to circumvent the rules as good as possible, but lowering the chance of one doing so increases the value of the competition in my opinion.

I'd like to hear your opinion on these points. Thanks for the contest, once again.

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6 years ago, # |
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Can I use programm for solving the task on the MathMash contest? I have only one try for sumbit the answer on the contest on the one problem?

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    6 years ago, # ^ |
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    No one can stop you from doing that but you should not :) Try to solve it without help of program

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      6 years ago, # ^ |
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      I have only one try for submit the answer on the contest on the one problem?

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6 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it 0 Vote: I do not like it

please answer to me.

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