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baqk's blog

By baqk, history, 6 months ago, In English

Can you give me some advice on how to become a specialist during the holidays?

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6 months ago, # |
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For me, it happened as follows:

I used to practice 1400-1600 (you can also see the large amount of problems I solved due to the long summer break). Also, I started to participate in Div-3's a lot. And honestly I've only increased rating by Div-3's. Solving ABCD (somewhat fast) or ABCDE (slow) in Div-3 will help you become cyan. When I participated, it was with the hope of AK in Div-3.

Also, participate in Div-2 rounds more, it will prepare you better. Else you will become like me (not preferable). In Div-2, I think if you consistently solve ABC, you will become cyan. Most importantly, solve problems randomly. By this I mean don't read the problem then decide whether you want to attempt it or not (This was a significant problem of mine). If you do that, you become stronger in areas where you are already good (and enjoy), and weaker in areas where you were weak. You must avoid this.

Also, I think you can set a higher goal and set blue. Cyan might be easy for you.

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    6 months ago, # ^ |
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    Bro, you are a hard worker. Thank you for the advice. I will try to get rid of laziness and solve problems despite the topics, like I’m bad at bitmasks and don’t solve such problems.

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      6 months ago, # ^ |
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      Keep up the work.

      XD. Long ago I used to think to become rating $$$x$$$ I needed to solve $$$x$$$ problems. Silly me!

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    6 months ago, # ^ |
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    do you have any suggestions on the particular topics one should cover ?

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      6 months ago, # ^ |
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      I think you should be familiar with things like sorting, binary search, two pointers, bitmasks, thinking greedily, maybe start some dp (maybe some standard problems), and using STL things like sets, maps, multisets, vectors (functions like upper_bound, count, unique, and other such things). Also many times speed matters so you should participate more and implement faster. I think I have rarely seen graph and tree problems, but it doesn't hurt to know more.

      Btw, like many people say, solve problems and learn topics if they are required in the problem and you don't know them.

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    6 months ago, # ^ |
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    Cool! also, when i go solving problems some of them are from div2 and they are rated 800 to 1000! and if ur lucky it will be one of those

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6 months ago, # |
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Graph and dfs ,bfs,Dijkstra,bellman , dsu

And number theory

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    6 months ago, # ^ |
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    Actually you dont need to learn those graph topics to become cyan