EDIT : It is clearly against terms of service and thus the idea has been dropped.
Our university’s Codechef campus chapter is planning to hold a session where we would help juniors and beginners approach and solve some easy problems.
Now , for the sake of keeping things interesting , we were planning to make it a friendly interactive session for solving the first few problems from this month’s long challenge, where everyone in the room would propose ideas and with a bit of trial and error reach the correct solutions with a bit of guidance from us.
My question is , will this be considered to “leaking” the solution and thus be a violation of terms in any way ?
I appreciate that your University has Campus Chapter. I further appreciate that it is active and is interested in having discussions about problem solving.
To encourage the spirit of Long Solving we need to encourage the spirit of Persistance, why would your juniors try hard over a problem when they know they will soon get a cooked up ready made solution.
See, better idea would be to have Problem Discussion Session at the end of months where you choose the LTIME , COOK OFF and LChallenge Problems( and may be other contests ) and each one who has solved it discusses his approach.
One more thing you can do to encourage participation is to keep a small rewards for the junior who is going to win the LChallenge , COOK Off or LTIME.
There are two parts of your post. The first two paragraphs talk about your will to help your juniors and beginners be a better coder by taking interactive sessions in your college, to which I completely agree. But the last line speaks about “leaking” the solution, which indeed is wrong and is not fair to other participants. (And as far as I remember, they will have to face certain consequences for that.)
Learning and developing the problem solving skills should be one of the main motives and one should ofcourse help their juniors with that. But doing that while the contest is still going on, defeats the purpose of the contest. This idea of “leaking” the solution infers that learning is the secondary motive whereas improving CC ranks is the primary one. Which should not be the case.
You can take two sessions on a monthly basis on weekends once the contest is ended. The first session can be about hints for solving cakewalk to easy problems. In other session you can try to explain your juniors some more complex algorithms required to solve tougher problems.
Or you can have a CC week where on everyday after the classes you can have a discussion about one of the contest problem, different approaches to solve them. Even students should share their new approaches with others so as to broaden their thinking horizon.
But this should be done once the contest gets over.
Ok, so I went through your request in detail. The probable questions you must answer are-
Why questions of current long challenge? Why not previous ones?
You claim that you are doing it for sake of keeping things interesting? “Lol, I will be getting solution to all these problems in the session. Why tf should I practice?”. You’re actually, killing off the very motivation to work ourselves.
You cannot, and SHOULD NOT spoon feed. Giving all ready made logic, answer for on going contest is nothing but spoon feeding and will deteriorate the coding culture of your college.
Even though our @admin is a nice, lenient lady, she isnt this lenient to allow this. It is considered violation of terms of service.
Do you think it is sane enough to ask such a question in a public discussion forum?
Indirectly, what you are asking is : Are you allowed to leak the answers of “few”(not sure how many you want to :P) questions from a ongoing contest hosted on codechef to a whole bunch of people, and you are asking that to codechef itself? Are you serious? XD
Please read the code of conduct and don’t asl such silly questions mate.
You can discuss past problems with them from previous contests to let them get an idea!
You didn’t really get my point. How can I give them solutions to the problem I haven’t yet solved myself. It would have been a session where we solve the problems together but as it is against terms , we won’t be going through with it.
Yes it is sane enough to ask this question here. If you read my question properly , we would have had a session where a group of people would solve the problem together. Have you never solved long/lunchtime/cook-off together with your friends ? This would have been similar but with 10-15 people instead of 3-4 people. Anyway , the plan has been cancelled.
“everyone in the room would propose ideas and with a bit of trial and error reach the correct solutions with a bit of guidance from us.”
does this sound like spoon-feeding? Is a group programming session equivalent to spoon feeding? Anyway , the idea has been dropped so no use discussing it anymore
If questions are from a live contest, yes. Why do you practice questions? To perform well in contest. If all contest questions start being discussed and solutions being given, then it IS spoon feeding them everything- and making any “practice for contest” useless since “answers will be available in discussion.”
Anyway , the idea has been dropped so no use discussing it anymore
Exactly. What was the point of that comment anyway if its no use discussing it anymore.
I was just trying to explain my point of view as I was being regarded as someone who is asking permission to blatantly leak solutions , which was not really my aim. Anyway, what matters is that we won’t be going through with the idea.
Dont take my tone wrong. I never accused you of anything. In fact, if you see, I considered, analyzed your request and instead gave you feedback where it will be negative.
I understand your aim when you said that you want to discuss Q from on going contest, but that violates the ToS. I think the matter is settled then
