Competitive Programming: How to Learn from Contests

[@tilakmadichettitheappdeveloper]

"Look deep into your soul, into the dark and foggy mist of your memories" - Colin Galen 2021

[@imranif3899]

A horror mood, indeed.

[@ojasvsingh5142]

Colin is a motivational speaker orz

[@anupestuff]

I have deep rooted fear of string problems. My fear is more than the lack of knowledge. Irrational fear as you say. But you motivate me man. You are touching other people life in positive way. Keep doing such videos.

[@harshiit]

The main reason for not growing rating wise is not learning enough from past contests. The sooner you realise this the faster you gain ratings.

[@kaladinium7337]

Hey, the audio quality is a lot better now.

[@ColinGalen]

Yep, I finally started using a better mic

[@sukeshseth989]

Hi, thank you for sharing this, I've been sad because of poor performance in recent contests & this video really helped me figure out what I was doing wrong.

[@kongzilla2897]

This video has a whole different vibe... Motivated , Loved it :)

[@prateekgautam7398]

It was weird listening colin clear, I'm used to his previous voice which was bit unique in that microphone.

[@himansumaurya2883]

if he will lower the lower freq. it will be great. It distort little in 2x. just a suggestion

[@jdragon8184]

add this , dont write half baked solution , think it through then write , it improved my rank 3 times

[@khushitshah678]

So true, don't start coding unless you know exact solution.

[@nishchayshroff7334]

Yes my performance also improved after doing this

[@gammastrain5289]

No beauty in peaks without valleys

[@joshua_dlima]

Thanks for the advice man, I'll try my best to follow it

[@MaisonBarrera-k3j]

Thanks for the advice man, I'll try my best to follow it. Hey, the audio quality is a lot better now..

[@legendry]

Thanks for such amazing content!

[@astroflexx82]

Thanks a lot for this. Really helped me.

[@nathanromanelli2845]

thank you colin, very cool

[@nathanromanelli2845]

oh wrong account oh god oh fuck

[@vinitdhandharia3478]

Thank You, Bro, I wish I would be able to beat you someday : )

[@adarshgaur6706]

Hey colin can u make aa separate video about maths background needed for competetive programming

[@saiprashanth3597]

hmm there's a lot I mean the whole ocean of math is required. But yeah Not much is required to actually start your cp journey

[@parsabushehri5488]

Combinatorics is computer style math, and you can just add math proofs and geometry, which these two topics are in high school books

[@abhijitmishra746]

This is superb content.

[@sobieso]

yayyy sir colin orz

[@nirajandata]

philosophie

[@muj1003]

i shall go on a game theory crusade on codeforces lol

[@harpalsinhjadeja5571]

Zero dislikes is the proof

[@napoleon3242]

Colin, what if I can't solve past 1-2 problems in Educational rounds? What should I do in that case? Should I stop trying or start practicing on the problems list (easy -> hard)?

[@sankalpmishra284]

If you know the answer then pls tell me also.

[@prakharranjan8089]

I actually never want to miss contests even though I can solve 1-2 problems in Div2 (I have streaks of 7-8 contests back to back). But on some days I can't join on time(maybe 1hr late because of classes) so should I still participate and submit(which will obviously result in -ve delta) or I should not spoil the problems and virtually participation instead?

[@ColinGalen]

I probably should have mentioned this in the video. If you're forced to miss some part of the contest, then it's usually okay to virtual it later, as long as you're able to take it as seriously as a contest. (My argument about rating representing true skill doesn't apply here, because if you're forced to miss part of a contest, you have an inherent disadvantage vs. other people)

[@prakharranjan8089]

Ok thanks 😀

[@pavanvenkat9182]

How did you add performance column in your contest page?

[@ColinGalen]

An extension: greasyfork.org/en/scripts/402180-codeforces-performance

[@vedbhatawadekar6842]

@@ColinGalen what does performance exactly mean though?

[@Entertainmentexe]

​@@vedbhatawadekar6842 It shows what rating suits your performance in that particular contest.

[@anupestuff]

@Colin, how do you suggest to watch any video series on any programming topics such as yours. Should we solve the problem ahead of time and then listen to your solution videos? I guess my main question is, how can a person learn from by solving few problems and for remaining, read the solutions because one can't solve all problems with so many websites with so many problems on each of them. Or how can I critically listen to any video on programming topics?

[@wolfie-1812]

my favourite youtuber :) orz

[@sid1jha432]

How can we improve our speed 😅

[@shashwatkasliwal4646]

Hi the problem I generally face during div2 rounds is that I get stuck on either B/C and then I just don't feel like skipping a lower problem for a higher problem like D and then I end up not doing either of the problem :(

[@replyingtomemeansyourstupi8996]

B,C nahi hoga toh D nahi hoga

[@tushar7305]

Same thing happens with me

[@notintheobservableuniverse2594]

@@replyingtomemeansyourstupi8996 That really depends, if the reason you arre stuck is a bug, you might do well on D despite not passing C.

[@snigdhsinha7235]

One small question, how did you get that "performance" column under your "contests" page? (The column beside the "rating change" column)

[@ColinGalen]

An extension: greasyfork.org/en/scripts/402180-codeforces-performance

[@焱-u5c]

Thank You so much🥺🥺🥺🥺

[@yashdeore473]

thanks a lot 😄😄😄😄😄😄😀😀😀😀😀😀

[@noob7656]

How does the performance column work? What does it indicate?

[@friedchicken1449]

Hello galen.Will you make a video of you doing cotext.

[@kabboghosh1853]

wait is over

[@nishuz]

OTZ LGM WHEN?

[@saiprashanth3597]

Isn't Colin already an LGM? :thinkies:

[@iAmReallyNotFunny]

no he is not he is international grandmaster

[@saiprashanth3597]

:thinkies:

[@nishuz]

@@saiprashanth3597 then we need smearing nutella on face video ASAP!

[@saiprashanth3597]

@@nishuz true

[@Selim_Hasan_Raj]

Hey,Colin i did 3 contests and i didn't able to solve any question. i don't know what's wrong with me. what should i do right now?

[@ColinGalen]

Earlier problems are often heavily based on math and reasoning. I would guess that a strategy would be to spend a lot of time just thinking about problems and pursuing random ideas, even the stupidest ones. If you can rule out all your wrong ideas, then eventually you'll be able to settle for the right ones. Solving other things like math problems may also help with that sort of reasoning.

[@sanchitkhare7977]

Hey colin can you tell if I should upsolve and practice topics of the current contest and then go take part in next contest or should i take part in every contest?

[@ColinGalen]

I would say that doing every contest can't hurt, as it can give you a lot of information about where you're lacking in

[@saiprashanth3597]

How to learn from contest: When you fst cuz you used real numbers, Realize that you'll never ever use them again for solving problems

[@nishuz]

lmao ceil nice

[@ColinGalen]

Not a bad lesson :P (although you may need them for geo or problems that explicitly require them)

[@yama-mm8qr]

Man, maybe it’s just me, but I feel like participating in contests as a total beginner feels sorta hopeless. You get tunnel-visioned for a single convoluted approach and end up not solving anything because you spent all your time trying to fix trivial errors like runtime exceeding. Also doesn’t help that they don’t even show you the pre test cases that your program failed on.

[@muhammadzayed4692]

When i watch your videos i feel like every thing is easy and go to CF solve problems 😂 , i need your advice how to practice on topics and how can i prepare for icpc your topics stream really help me so much thanx for your hard work .

[@farhansaif3044]

Thanks a lot

[@adityaj21]

I had -400 delta and I'm afraid to submit now😞

[@ksun8993]

What do you mean by Delta here

[@notvoidz]

@@ksun8993 change in rating i.e he got -400 in rating

[@RomanReigns-ds8hs]

Just upsolve them , upsolving is a way to get good at contests. (As far as u are learning that's totally fine).

[@adityaj21]

@@RomanReigns-ds8hs yeah I upsolve most of them but can't do much in actual contest

[@RomanReigns-ds8hs]

My suggestion would be just open all problems in different tabs and don't watch ranklist or no of users solved until the contest ends ( this might be a useful suggestion while giving contest).

[@flanker53]

me who is able to solve only 2 problems..... cries in sadness

[@12six69]

My rating graph is 180degree and I'm stuck with ratings like -10 +7 -2 -9+10.

[@alvesandre]

Why you don't do contests anymore?

[@nafiurrahmankhadem7178]

How do you learn from a problem ( or editorial / solution ) where you already knew every trick / knowledge needed to solve it but you still couldn't solve it?

[@dirkneuhauser8213]

For me, the majority of the cf contests are in the middle of the day in the middle of the week. Are you guys always taking off?

[@tdpencil2811]

Oddly, I miss the old microphone :(

[@sauravpandey599]

How did you get this performance column in codeforces.

[@ColinGalen]

It's an extension on Tampermonkey/Greasemonkey, you can install it at greasyfork.org/en/scripts/402180-codeforces-performance

[@bharathkalyans]

hey @Colin if you are using java as your cp language,could u please share your template thanks!!

[@yatnbangad7893]

Dropping in a comment today at rating 1379. Lets see how much better I get by the end of the year :)

[@yatnbangad7893]

I'm an expert at 1636 already!

[@gabrielwu5787]

In your "optimistic rating change" calculations, you ignored contests on which you would have lost rating, not just the ones on which you did lose rating, right (the two are different because a mild +delta in real life could be a -delta optimistically since you have a higher optimistic rating)? So pretty much you were looking at the subset of contests that maximizes your total current rating?

[@ColinGalen]

Yes, I calculated each rating change based on the current optimistic rating and made decisions based on that.

[@janvimyadventures1310]

guitar_wale-bhaiya

[@drsl1549]

nice video after 695

[@adarshshah9141]

orz

[@paulfunigga]

Participating in these contests is the reason why people have imposter syndrome. They don't learn real world technologies, instead they learn to participate in contests, and when they get a job, they realize they don't know anything about technologies and they feel stupid.

[@mathematics6199]

I guess you have atleast 70 percent audience from INDIA

[@deankjellberg1798]

I recently posted in codeforces about getting upset about being bad and how I should kill myself. Your video has helped me a lot man. Thank... really thanks

[@erfanmohammed7065]

:Orz

[@notvoidz]

:)

[@gatoradeee]

Y u donut show your face?

[@gabbar1867]

Biro please teach comptetive programming from basic

[@harshsamoliya1954]

My rating is stucked at 5000 at codeforce please help 😂😂😂

[@Ahmed18828]

you speak very fast i am not an english person so , i hope you speak less fast