@r_64 I think your problems were great. I didn’t miss the cover story at all.
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@r_64 , I prefer questions with no storys at all. Story requires more work to transform the question in its ‘pure analytic’ form.
I see divided opinions regarding the problem statement formulation, which is fine. To each his own :).
Fact is however, that this problem set had 5 solvable and 5 impossible problems for more than 97% of the coders. Just think about that :).
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Some possible reasons:
- Usually the input/output is tedious to implement
- Even if you implement a simple solution you can’t be sure how much you will score, so it doesn’t seem worth it.
- There was a huge math formula
- I like to leave challenge problem for last, and simply lost interest after i couldn’t solve more than 5 problems.
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^ Complete list of how I felt towards challenge problems not long ago, before I realized it’s not as tedious or unrewarding as it appears.
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That’s a motivating comment
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To everyone his opinions, rightly said dear :). In the end, the actual thing ought to be middle of the extreme two views to cater to all.
I personally feel story should be there so contestant HAS to make effort in stripping story off to get the pure mathematical form of statement. After which, he can easily google those concepts or start working if he is already acquainted with it. Giving pure analytic form itself, I interpret it as setter being lenient. 
But of course, story is a trivial part of problem statement, and its quality is the first thing we must look after
In addition to what vasja said, I think challenge problems earned that reputation/fear. Just look at this one- https://www.codechef.com/MAY17/problems/CHEFBATL
These days however, simpler (but interesting!) challenge problems are coming, and for that I agree that people should try to give a hand at those.
Okay, so cakewalk, simple, simple, easy, easy-med, med (possibly med-hard), med (possibly med-hard), hard, hard. We will try to follow this up. Whenever we are in doubt, we will try to make the first 5 problems easier than making them harder. Does this work fine?
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Seems fair enough to me.
I suppose atleast top 4 problems to be of same difficulty range as previous long challenges. Since in this sept challenge, there was a gap between problem 1,2,3 and problem 4.
first 4 questions solved by 2000 people then 200 ,literally that’s not fair. first 3 questions were too easy ,i think codechef changed their difficulty level after snackdown 2k17
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If you look at the level of first 4 questions of Jan or Feb long, and first 4 questions from last 2 long, you will see a huge difficulty decrease.
Many thanks for the organization of those mind challenges.
It’s hard to fit everybody’s needs and wishes.
Usually I spend hours (translating, reading 10 times or more) trying to figure what sort of graph is expected and how it can be built.
(Clearly I’m weak with this category, discovering things I’ve never learned ; the focus for my future efforts.)
The most encouraging graph problem I had to solve in a long challenge this year had an URL pointing to the definition of the graph. It was a rooted graph iirc. It was nice to learn things this way. An external URL. Nice.
September Challenge was an Interesting and informative challenge for me.I believe all long challenges should be of this quality.
This challenge forced me improve my skills by working hard on some of the hard problems.
There must be 2 to 3 problems of Easy Level to motivate beginners and others Medium to Hard Problems.
The more the number of challenging( Medium - hard ) problems the participants will try to work hard on them ( since this is a Long Challenge) thereby upgrading their skill set.
Participants will try to experiment with different algorithms and Data structures in order to optimize their solution.
100 points per problem is only a motivation.
People must understand that.
The main aim must always be gaining the ability to solve hard problems by applying efficient algorithms and data structures.
Patience is the Key. Try to have a Never Give Up Attitude.
I believe the main aim of CodeChef is to promote Programming in India and help in developing quality programmers with the ultimate aim to bring a Gold Medal to India in this field.
I think the ranking is just a motivation.
But the Need Must Be Gold.
The easiness will not motivate Hard Work and practice ( Thats what i believe ).
As for the stories I think the stories in the problems are necessary as in real world the problems are not always direct ( The World is not Kind enough ). The problems are reduced to smaller subproblems or another well defined problem.
Thats the Nature of Problem Solving.
Thanks to the Problem setters we get to encouter such a diverse set of problems that force us to deduce them into Mathematical problems by analysing them.
The Cook Off must mantain the standard and should be set in a way so as to serve as a bridge for The ACM ICPC.
You can motivate few top emerging Programmers (of Low rating) who are working hard ( Solve more problems than their perfomance during previous contest) between or during contests by rewarding them with Codechef Laddus.
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Regarding your suggestion of Solve more problems than their perfomance during previous contest) between or during contests by rewarding them with Codechef Laddus.
Some people are way too clever. There is scope for malpractice and thats a hindrance implementation of this suggestion. Else its pretty decent
The gap is because first 3 became easier rather than 4th becoming harder.
@shreyx phew finally found someone who agrees that this month’s long was better than previous one’s. I completely agree with your opinion Although i was able to solve only 3 but i found other problems very interesting.
- Agree with this.
- This is a long contest. You have like 10 days of time to read and understand a problem statement.
- I beleive maths is a part of competitive programming.
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