jack07's blog

By jack07, history, 4 years ago, In English
  • Whenever I've to face an interactive problem, I just change the question.
  • i.e., I get scared because once I tried to solve Interactive Promblem and all time I got Idleness Limit Exceeded and after that day I ne'er solved any interactive question.
  • But yesterday I found a nice problem which boosted my confidence over solving interactives.
  • The question link...

So in this question my approch was :

  1. Check for the answer between l and r.
  2. Do it till we get answer from computer as "x";
  • Now to identify what will be l and r,
  • Use bitmask, like
  • Firstly l= 1st bit 1 and all zero before and after that, r=next bit of l (MSB of l)+1 to be 1 and all zero. Increase 1 bit each time.

  • (0, 1) then, (1, 10) then, (10, 100) and so on... (In binary representation).

  • This will lead to check answer between powers of 2.

  • (0,1) then (1,2) then (2,4) and so on..(till 2^31)

  • Now we do this to identify our answer lies between l+1 and r we get.

  • This is because l will be smallest number with that MSB so we check for all powers of 2.

  • We can get this in at most 31 queries.

Now,

  • If we binary search between l+1 and r then we will find our answer within 30 queries.

  • The binary search approch was like,

  • let m=(l+r)/2;

  • Ask for answer between l and m (Here we just need to print (? l m) and take input from computer).

  • If answer is "x" then shift r to m, shift l to m otherwise.

Hence, answer is l+1.

Now,

  • As we are dealing with interactive problem so we need to flush the output we give.

  • For that use 'endl' after each cout instead of '\n'.

  • That's all we need to change between a regular problem and interactive problem.

  • We can also use fflush(stdout) but 'endl' does it.

It was a blessing in disguise.

So I just want to conclude that Interactive problems ain't that arduous to deal with.

Thank You and let me know if I'm wrong.

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +10 Vote: I do not like it

Everything is difficult until we succeed. :)

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

I have that similar issue with number theory and maths questions. Any other topic, I can crack upto 2000, maybe even higher rating questions, but on this particular topics, I can barely solve 1600 rating questions. Still looking for my rescue problem lol.