hello_its_me's blog

Will solving CSES help ?
By hello_its_me, 6 months ago, In English

I am fed up with cf problems. They are sometimes too hard for me. So i am thinking of taking a break from here. I used to do CSES and solved a lot of them and now i am thinking of getting back to it.
My question is at least what rating can i expect after solving all the CSES problems (ofcourse excluding the additional problems and advanced techniques). Please if any one can give me an idea about that then i will do it wholeheartedly from now on.

More specifically what i am trying to ask is if you have done a lot of CSES problems did they actually help you in improving in cf or in doing harder problems in general ? If Yes, pls share your thoughts. Otherwise i dont think i should focus on CSES and maybe shift to something else.

Please don't downvote for no reason. You can simply ignore if you don't like it. Thanks in advance.

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6 months ago, hide # |
 
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From a trainer of CP, I have heard that Specialist is guaranteed after finishing CSES.

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6 months ago, hide # |
 
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At the very least, solving more CSES problems can't hurt; CSES gives you the foundational sub-problem-solving techniques. However, it won't necessarily help too much with actual problem-solving, i.e. technique synthesis/combination. This aspect is needed for solving most problems on codeforces.

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6 months ago, hide # |
 
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I have only solved two sections, Introductory and The searching sorting one, and both had many repeating patterns that come in div2 B, C, specially the searching sorting one. So I think you should solve atleast those two. Don't know about others sections though.

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    6 months ago, hide # ^ |
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    how can i better understand the recursion behind these problems: josephus problem and tower of hanoi?
    spent a lot of time on them still haven't been able to grasp them properly.

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I would recommend its sorting searching , and trees section ,those sections are lit and will never let you down . It will be either win or learn :)

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cses is a good source for learning dsa. the problems there mostly focus on topic knowledge.

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It's inefficient if your goal is Codeforces specifically, i.e. being able to solve reasonably hard problem very fast.

On CSES, you can easily spend 6 hours trying to solve a problem way above your rating, especially since you cannot read the editorial. You would still improve your problem-solving skills, but:

  • it's unlikely that you would have time to reach a similar level problem in contest
  • the techniques you discovered might be so advanced that you'll forget them.

Instead, you could have attempted to solve 10-20 problems rated from 1100 to 1300 (you can filter here).

A Way to Practice Competitive Programming

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