teemu_ryyti's blog

Solving difficult math problems for CP
By teemu_ryyti, history, 21 month(s) ago, In English

I have a question. There is an opinion that solving math problems improves solving skill which is very important at Codeforces. Could you please give me an advice. Is solving IMO-level math problems and reading their editorials correlate much with CP solving skills and can boost it? Especially I'm interested in opinions of sucessful people in Codeforces (CM and above). Thank you in advance.

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20 months ago, # |
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Short answer: Can it help? Yes. But most of the benefits are not specific to Olympic math problem solving: first year of college math would bring similar benefits.

Long answer: When solving CP problems, my math background helps me being thorough and systematic. The knowledge of some concepts can also make it easier to think clearly about the problems.

However, this is not specific to math Olympics problem solving, but more to math in general. Except on some combinatorics or construction CP problems, I do not think experience on IMO-like problems is especially useful because the thought process feels different.

About me: During high school, I participated in the math Olympic preparation of my country. Although I was never selected for the IMO, I still have several years of math Olympic problem solving experience. I am now studying math and engineering at university. I recently joined Codeforces because I wanted to prepare for an irl CP contest and now I using it because I think it is fun and to improve at programming and algorithmics.

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    20 months ago, # ^ |
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    Thank you. I do not think that college mathematics dramatically improves it. The math itself in Codeforces is not very difficult. There are many people from high school who performs very well in CP even without math from university. And I'm trying to understand how to improve creativity in solving problems. That is why I asked about math problems.

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20 months ago, # |
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I think there's some merit to it and I think some MO problems (specially combinatorics problems) have a really big intersection with CP, but I also think that a lot of them don't.

If you wanna do MO for fun it's nice but idk if it's more efficient than doing problems from cf if you're only thinking about CP skill.

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20 months ago, # |
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MO knowledge is always nice to have as I also heavily benefited from it, and it is peak thinkForces type problems, so I would give it a try.

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