VioletVal's blog

By VioletVal, 3 years ago, In English

I got a message stating that my submission 151114303 significantly coincides with the submission 151115223 that was submitted by kHarsh3715, a user I don't know. The submissions are indeed similar, but it is because the algorithm needed to solve this problem is relatively simple (this being Problem A), we both wrote in Python (the other user wrote in PyPy, which is an implementation of Python), chose commonly used variable names, and wrote in an easy to read manner. I used an IDE on my local machine, so I could not have even unintentionally shared my code, and no other user could have seen my code either before the end of the contest. The message said to provide conclusive evidence that a coincidence has occurred due to the use of a common source published before the competition, but it was not a coincidence based on a common source as I did not need a source to solve this problem. It was more that we both happened to use simple implementations of a simple algorithm in a simple style. If you look at the submissions we had for the other problems in the contest, you'll see that they aren't very similar.

Please let me know if you need any additional information.

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