Something Unimaginable !

Though I'm late but still I won't stop myself.Wishing everyone a very happy and prosperous diwali .

This is the first time I was participating in ACM ICPC regionals and we got selected for one but the sad part is that we got selected just because of the rules of the competition .

According to the rules of the competition - Firstly, those teams will be selected which have solved at least 1 question and are first from their college,if slots are left then teams will be selected from the rank list according to the merit.

As you can see that it may happen that from a college where many good programmers are participating a highly potential team may not get entry to the regional while a not so good team may get it easily.

Let me show you an example - Suppose there are two colleges X,Y

X is a very big and renowned college and has around 50 good programmers .

Y is not so big college and doesn't have programmers at par with X .Lets say somehow, Y comes up with 1 team.

In the contest around 7 teams from X solve 2/5 problems , 8 teams solve 3/5 problems and 2 teams solve 4/5 problems .

On the other hand team from Y manage to solve 1/5 'the easiest of all problem' and gets rank 1 in their college.

So, according to the rules it may happen that the teams which solved 3/5 problems don't get selected as they are not the best in their college but as Y's team was the best in their college it will get entry to the regional. Sounds unfair right ?!

That's what happens every year in the Olympics of programming ACM ICPC .

 Nevertheless , we got selected and we should try our best to prove our selection right. 

We missed Kharagpur online contest.It was scheduled at 2 to 5 PM and due to our negligence we thought that it is at 6 to 9 PM because for Amritapuri regional it was from 6 to 9 PM .

I came to know about this at around 5:45 and we were dumbstruck. This was one of the biggest mistake we would have ever done but I told my teammates not to worry about anything we still have Amritapuri and we will give our best there.

Surprisingly on Diwali day I got a surprise that due to some reasons they are re conducting the contest on Oct 30 and luckily, very luckily we got another chance for the contest. This time we won't make any mistake .

This week I solved problems from SPOJ and participated in codeforces round also . After a very long time I again participated in the online contest on codeforces and stood 1285 from around 2000 contestants . 

Question: Is it time to change the selection procedure ICPC regionals ? Leave your comments below .

In love with codes

These days I am truly enjoying programming . Learning new & exciting techniques/algorithms .

Now,I've started challenging  my friends to see who is better at competitive programming . This week I participated in codeforces Div2 round and solved 1 problem but I lost to my friend Sudharsan who got it correct in first go and that too within 14 minutes , that's very impressive start but I don't like to lose much and I'll come back strong .

These days I am solving problems on codeforces .

Surprisingly we(me & Sudharsan) got selected for round 2 of TCS coding contest and will try to best in the second round as we couldn't do well in our first round .

Last night I was solving a problem which required factors of a no. to be calculated first . I was thinking of searching the method on the net but then I decided that I'll try it out myself first . I came with an idea and it worked

Suppose we want to calculate factors of N (including 1 & N itself)
for(i=1;i<=sqrt(N);i++)
{
     if(i*(N/i)==N)
    {  
        printf("%d",i);
        if(i!=N/i)
        printf("%d",i);
     }
}
This will print all the factors of N . If statement is included to avoid repetition of 1 if we write N = 1.

Today I've challenged my friends in Codechef's Cook off . Lets see who wins . Waiting for the round to commence .

Thanks for reading and keep coding .

Practice Session

So, once again I am shifting to TopCoder to hone my programming skills .This time I am doing Div 2 500 problems . I am forming a team to apply for ICPC regionals . First ,we need to qualify for the onsite regional contest and if we are able to do that it will be great as we are just in our 2nd year and with very less experience in programming . Lets see what happens.

This week I was doing random problems and participated in Codechef's Long contest which is still going on . I've already done 2 problems in the contest .I am participating in Codevita also which will be conducted on Aug. 12.

I've written a C++ program for BFS and will try to apply it on some graph problems .  

Thanks for reading . 

A week full of algorithmic coding

Last sunday I participated in the round 1C of Google Code Jam 2014 and secured 4128 position after solving one small input problem ,that means I am out of my first ever GCJ participation . I am quite happy as well as satisfied with my performance in the competition as I am still in the early stages of learning phase I think my performance was good .

My performance in GCJ 14 at a glance -

Qualification Round - ranked 15128(Solved 3 problems)

Round 1A - 3624(without solving a single problem :P )

Round 1B - 6209(solved 1 ques)

Round 1C - 4128(solved 1 ques)

It may not look good but after knowing the fact that this performance was given by a person who learnt his first programming language just 5 months back!! it certainly looks good isn't it ?

I look forward to improve my algorithmic skills and I will make sure that I'll improve my performance in the next GCJ . 

Today my semester result got announced and I scored an 'Ex' 10/10 points in lab section of programming course and 9/10 'A' in Theory course .Good to see those letter grades in the grade sheet. :)

I was practicing binary search and top down approach(Dynamic Programming) these days .

I was amazed to see the power of simple algorithm of binary search thanks to the Topcoder tutorials. 

Algorithmic Coding Rocks!!!

Starting of summer vacation 2014

This week I was very busy in my end semester exams but I still participated in the round 1A of GCJ 2014 its a different story that I couldn't solve a single question but still I was trying for the whole 150 minutes to solve problems.Got a world rank of 3624 I think the problems were of good level that's why even after not solving a single question I landed up with this kind of rank.
 After a long time around 4 months I am again in my hometown ,it feels very nice to be in your home :) .

Participated in round 1B this sunday and I managed to solve 1 small input set problem but rest of them were not in my range(at this point of time).Secured a world rank of 6209.