5_11N's blog

How To become specialist?
By 5_11N, history, 34 hours ago, In English

I have been pupil for one year and I became a specialist for a very short period of time several times. Are there ways to develop the rate that I can follow??

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34 hours ago, # |
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solve more problems in range [1400 : 1600], learn more theories. do more upsolves)

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31 hour(s) ago, # |
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Div3 abuse

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    31 hour(s) ago, # ^ |
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    On a more serious note, I’ve tried several things that I THINK may have helped (watch me lose it all on the next Div2):

    1. Solve by letter, not by rating: Look through your past contests: if you are struggling with solving Div2B within a reasonable amount of time, go down the list of most recent Div2’s and ONLY grind the B’s until you feel confident about those problems. Then move on to C

    2. Time your solves: For above-mentioned technique, how do you know when you are confident enough to move on to the next letter? Get a piece of paper. Set a stopwatch. Mark the time spent to solve the problem, and whether or not you had to peek at editorial.

    3. When to look at editorial: I define stuck on a problem as not having ANY more ideas on how to approach it. That means only when my intuition doesn’t spark AT ALL or when every possible idea I have come up with is either too expensive or incorrect. I will first look at the problem tags. Usually there might be a topic that I didn’t think of that helps me solve (for this use this extension, it allows you to show tags by problem click). If I still cannot solve, I will read edi/hints until I see the FIRST observation that I dodos not see. I will immediately tab out and try the problem until all possible ideas with that new observation has been exhausted as well. This should allow you to solve without the WHOLE editorial in most cases.

    So yeah, these are a few tips that I used back when I actually had motivation to do CF.

    Take it with a grain of salt, as I Div3 abused my way to specialist :P

    Besides that, It helps to draw some problems on paper, look for small patterns in custom test cases, and don’t be afraid to guess random assumptions!

    Happy Coding!

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      31 hour(s) ago, # ^ |
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      Sorry for the late edit, I’m on my phone and it accidentally submit while so was halfway through with writing. Hope this helps!

      _(:3 」∠)_

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31 hour(s) ago, # |
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don't be like me XD

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31 hour(s) ago, # |
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You need to start solving 1600-1700 problems.... You should in state where when you see a 1600 problem you should be able to solve that within contest. Stop solving 1400-1500 as you have done enough.

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31 hour(s) ago, # |
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use magic !!

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31 hour(s) ago, # |
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Practice more.

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30 hours ago, # |
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Div 4 abuse

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29 hours ago, # |
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refrain from participating in Div1+2 and Div2 (edu round particularly), statistics shown that div3 participant always lose rating on Div1+2 about 30 on average.

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    26 hours ago, # ^ |
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    bro but in my case i rocketed my way to specialist just by giving div2s and div 1 + 2 only. Although i must say i give contests after a long time and every time i got lucky but yeah giving only those contest somehow made me specialist faster idk why.

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