It took me about a year to become an Expert, which may be a small feat, but I still believe that maybe sharing the resources which I personally had used might help someone.
For learning algorithms: You can use a channel called takeuforward by a guy named striver: https://www.youtube.com/@takeUforward. The guy has excellent explaining skills. I would ideally recommend building a habit of reading blogs and articles, as later on, you will only have those to help you.
For practice:
CSES Problem set: It's a very great website to practice good quality questions. The questions are sometimes standard and sometimes very unique so you ultimately end up learning a lot but the time constrains can be a bit irritating tbh. https://cses.fi/problemset/list/
TLE eliminators cp-31: Best one I found for rating wise practice although you will need more than 31 questions generally to get comfortable with higher rating but it does provide us with all the necessary concepts and algorithms related to that rating. https://www.tle-eliminators.com/cp-sheet
Codeforces Problemset: Just put in the rating you want to get comfortable in and keep on making it green until you can comfortably solve at least 8/10 problems without any help. (probably the one which will work for everyone)
Always upsolve the contests and if you are unable to find you're weakness then maybe try looking at the contests where you got a negative or very low rating change and see work on the topic of the questions which you were unable to solve or solved too late.
Give as many contests as you can provided you have time to upsolve them later. Some other sites where I give contests are: -Atcoder -Codechef -Leetcode
Most importantly enjoy the process always remember rating is a by-product not the main goal.
Hey could you probably jot down some additional concepts you needed to solve div2 D?
Like personally i am not able to solve div 2 d every time but from what i know you should be comfortable with data structures and algos like dynamic programming, graphs, segment trees, sparse table, ordered set etc. You can also try solving each div 2 d and if you encounter a div 2 d which you can't solve due to any concept which you didn't know maybe study that then. Also you should be good at mathematics as well. Personally I would suggest you to solve div 2 d's, solve entire dp, graphs, rmqs of cses set then 1600-1800 from tle sheet and you should pretty much be able to solve every div 2 d's from then on.
Hello, to be good at math, what topics do you think will benefit us more in the long run? Can you suggest some topics in math that I should look at or maybe learn?
Combinatorics, Euclid mathematics etc. You can google maths for competitive programming and then you can select topics and difficulty according to your rating
Thank you for the suggestion.
How would you recommend a beginner(me) who is not very good at coding(100% MEEE) to start their journey?
Ideally just learn a programming language I personally use C++ but any would do then just start practicing 800 rating then 900 and so on... getting comfortable in one rating then other and as you encounter some new data structure or algorithm because of which you were not able to solve the question just study that algorithm or data structure from somewhere.
hello thank you for this, do you also provide live help during contests? i need someone to help me when i do contests because i'm not very good
Nope, that's cheating. Try to focus on learning rather than resorting to such dishonest methods.
hey
can you see my profile a bit, and help me as i manage to solve A and B quickly in div 2, but not able to solve C in it. what should i do for it?
It's very simple actually practice C's and practice from 1400-1600 but i guess you need to work on 1300 rating as well as I can clearly see you use AI in live contests. For the time being practice from 1300-1600 regularly upsolve contests and stop using AI in live contest and while practicing as well. Only use ai when it is taking too much time to find a bug and that also only while practicing not in live contests.
Okay
bhai nitzen mujhe bhi kuch bata de plzz like meh new hu codeforces par
mere se 1k ke nhi ho rahe hai sawal like i am not able to apply stl !!
ek question solve karne par bhi negative lag jaa raha hai toh abb div 2 ka b wala bhi karna hoga kuch guide kar do div 2 ka b ke liye bhi SleeepyHead
grind in rating 1000-1400 and study DSA like sliding window, binary search etc. Practice question b of div 2 contests and upsolve each contest.
Ok thanks
Why should someone go for a sheet? It's a shit mindset solving a sheet when you can explore all possible problems, every problem teaches you something! CSES and Atcoder are good in teaching you algos but to increase problem solving I am not with solving a sheet.
Solving more questions is important but some people just get stuck or like to solve variety of problems in that case sheets can help, I personally do both and don't mind anyone doing any of these as long as they don't cheat
thinking if people always understood that rating is just a side effect for the experience, we would live like in the year 3025.
bro suggestions for me please , i learnt graphs recently from striver after seeing your blog , i didnt learn dsu yet. please tell me topics that i should practise ,please analyse my account once.
why would you consider learning dsu to reach expert?
I am amazed to see that you were able to solve c of last contest but not b, I hope you haven't cheated but if you have please stop it but anyways I would recommend you to stop learning graph or dynamic programming right now and focus on practicing from 1000-1200 rating and try to solve them until you can at least solve 8/10 questions without any kind of help! You wouldn't need any data structure i believe but if you still want to you should focus on hashing, sorting, basic mathematics like basic combinatorics, basic Euclid maths etc, maybe even normal binary search and two pointers but nothing more, focus on perfecting them rather that learning graphs, dp etc.
Bhai can you take a look at my profile? I want to reach specialist and then expert, I am currently learning dp? What else can I do?
You should focus on practicing from 1200-1400 rating until you can solve 8/10 questions without any kind of help in all of these ratings, learn/practice sliding window, binary search on answers, Euclid mathematics (intermediate). Not things like dp etc they can wait you can learn them after you have become a specialist.
Thank You, I have learned all those topics and also I am quite comfortable in solving questions from 1200-1400 but they took a lot of time like 1 hour to 1.5 hour which is why I am not able to solve them in every contest. Should I just give a lot of virtual contest to increase speed? Also any tips for dp, I am finding it quite hard..
It's not time for dp, you should master previous topics first. YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE with 1200-1400 if you can't solve them withing 45 minutes practice more. But if you still insist on DP then just practice a lot specially the cses DP area
bhai sorry for disturbing you again but can you tell whats the best way to increase speed? should i give lots of virtual contests or is there any other way?
how did you managed to increase your speed despite solving less questions? Like I can see you didnt solved many questions of particular rating.. Thank You!
give contest solve more questions and properly as well, up solve contest. And just keep on practicing more and more some people need more questions some need less it is useless to compare, moreover i have a strong mathematics and physics background as well which might result in this.
Wtf Strong
what should i do to become better at data structure and strings? i use C++
is there some material related to those topics
Practice questions and learn them as you encounter them the best strategy which is simple easy to implement and makes cp fun as well just go step by step first 800 then 900 then 1000 and so on.... First get comfortable in one and them move to the next.
Well, congratulations to you.
Thanks a lot!
Please take a look at my profile.And give me some advice.I want to reach pupil then specialist.
Practice from 800 then 900 and so on upto 1200
For those interested in getting help with upsolving, you can check out the post contest discussions of codeforces contests on TLE's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TLE_Eliminators.
The Goat himself commented! ♥️