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Tensor's blog

need a coach
By Tensor, 10 years ago, In English

I do believe in books and practicing alot depending on my own, that's how i started tell now. But it turns that books, practicing alot and a coach the three together is the fastest method to do better quickly.

I need a coach to train me and give me that advices that would make me better and better and grow faster in competitive programming. Is there anyone willing to help me ?

thanks in advance..

UP: fortunately i had found one :-)

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10 years ago, # |
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How old are you bro? Are there any friends at your college to practice together? Team work rules. Unfortunately I don't have ones.

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    10 years ago, # ^ |
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    I'm 20. yes i have friends in my college but till now we didn't practice together, and all of us need a coach :(

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10 years ago, # |
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Just curious — what exactly you need from a coach? Nowadays one can find almost all required materials, editorials, lectures online.

What should coach do to help you? Let's imagine that i want to be your coach — how can i help you? Besides saying "solve some problems and you'll improve".

Maybe i just never met any ACM coaches before, but i have no idea how one should act to help somebody — if you want to practice and improve, then you practice and improve, otherwise it is just a motivation problem.

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    10 years ago, # ^ |
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    i do find all materials and editorials online, i used to self study all algorithms and everything even for my college. but i also believe that a coach can give me years of experience in few days. in brief what i can do in one year a coach can give me that in few months, but also that need hard work from me and that's what i'm doing since i started competitive programming tell now.

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    10 years ago, # ^ |
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    A coach can help at the beginning (up to say, yellow level).

    1. A coach can look at your code and tell you what part of it is dirty/complicated and needs to be rewritten. The code I wrote when I just started programming is a complete mess(it is still a mess though, but slightly better mess:), and I wish I had somebody telling me that it needs to be structured in a certain way.

    2. When you just start programming, a lot of things may be completely unintuitive and look like magic, especially in C++. You would also have difficulties asking a meaningful question due to lack of knowledge. A coach can watch you solving a problem and explain to you all the magic.

    3. A coach can stop you from studying things that need some background you don't have. It is probably a good idea to understand bipartite matching before Hungarian algorithm, bfs before max flow, and so on. Many people try to grasp difficult concepts and fail due to lack of experience in similar but easier problems.

    I actually tried to do all 1-3 things with some people, but I failed. Motivation is much more important than all of the above:)

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      10 years ago, # ^ |
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      I agree with you: motivation is important. Many juniors over estimate the purpose of the coach and how could he highly affect their performance

      However, still coach could play a good rule: - Some of them, exactly as you listed...though you somehow failed - Discussing with the team members success factors in a contest...team management..time management...strategy to follow in the contest...how to behave in bad scenarios...how to utilize score board...etc - Coach could play role in selecting problems, matching some level of someone. Gradual problems in TC and CF sure help much for guys without a coach - Motivating students, helping in teams formation...putting tasks to do..is very important to keep them active and working in groups. - In addition, monitoring students and discovering their weak points and giving help in that (e.g. debugging skills).

      We could think in many other things..but again..someone without a coach + some discussions with others to get some guiding is still a great way to be good.

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      10 years ago, # ^ |
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      you're right iensen when i started programming i do alot of practice on topcoder 250 problems without knowing 'run system test' so most of my problems where wrong, after i solved lots of brute force problems on spoj, uva & topcoder i jumped towards graph!!! and ignored paradigms. i didn't find that one who would tell me not to do so and i must have masters the paradigms first, i have entered the arab acm acpc with graph and geometry and very very basic knowledge of dynamic programming -insufficient amount to solve problems- and that's why i need a coach.

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10 years ago, # |
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still no one willing to help ?! :(

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    10 years ago, # ^ |
    ← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +1 Vote: I do not like it

    It reminds me my blog post, I_love_Tanya_Romanova told me the same, try to improve by yourself and if you have a problem ask to the community.

    But, I also heard that a friend of mine got a red coder reply, so don't give up but in the meantime improve by yourself.

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10 years ago, # |
← Rev. 6   Vote: I like it +7 Vote: I do not like it

Here's something for you:

def train():
  B = buy_book_CP3()  # Competitive Programming 3 by steven Halim
  foreach chapter in B:
     read_theory_section()
     solve_UVa_problems_endofchapter() # each chapter contains UVa problems with hints
     
     P_tc = sort_Topcoder_problems (Tag =chapter.name, DIfficulty = increasing)
     for i in 1 : 20
          solve P_tc[i]
     P_cf = sort_Codeforces_problems (Tag =chapter.name, DIfficulty = increasing)
     for i in 1 : 20
          solve P_cf[i]
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    10 years ago, # ^ |
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    thank you very much, the book has just arrived from lulu.com xD

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10 years ago, # |
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Maybe this is the guy you're looking for.

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    10 years ago, # ^ |
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    thank you so much for your interest :)

    fortunately i had found one :-)

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