Exciting week !

This week was full of ups and downs (I like it ;) ). I started practicing div 2 500 problems on TopCoder but after 2 days I was having loads of academic work pending and unfortunatley I had to give up my idea of solving 3 problems a day . But I didn't stop coding . Everyday I was learning new & exciting stuffs . I started learning python and C++ (OOPS part) I fell ill also(Now I am fit) .

One of my batch mate  asked me about the working of the square root function I told him that it should behave like a standard function with some iteration by which it outputs the answer to a particular level of precision and then while learning python I came across Newton Raphson method to calculate square root of a given number . I was very excited to see such method .Its like -

suppose we want to calculate the sqrt of N -
1. Take a rough approximation of lets say x = N/2 (It can be taken anything but it is advised to make it close to the square root of N)
2.  Iterate -
                 y = (x + N/x)/2
                 x = y
3. stop iterating when you reach to a particular level of precision lets say 0.00001

 sqrt(N)
{
     x = N/2
     while(1)
    {  y = (x+N/x)/2
        if(abs(y-x)<0.00001)break
        x = y
    }
   return x
}
Wondering whether if this is the method behind the built in function sqrt ... Gonna search for it .

Yesterday, I gave an online contest on Codechef which was conducted by IIIT Delhi's programming club and got 362nd rank .. All questions were easy but I could solve only 2/5 due to lack of Algorithmic knowledge .

Thanks for reading and keep coding !

Learning how to climb

I am still practicing Div2 250 problems and when I get tired or frustated (when I stuck at some prob. for long) I start doing problems from other online judges like SPOJ,Codechef.

On Topcoder I am stuck at string problems like how to extract integer values from the given string
In some questions we are given string vectors and we need to manipulate the integer values like summing all the integers or some calculations involving them . I've found a way to deal with them . I am using c_str() and sscanf() functions but I am in a search of better technique to deal with them .

By the way, My college is at 11th page of institutions rankings on SPOJ currently ranked at 1042 . I want it to be in top 100 at least and for that to happen I need help from all my fellow batch mates and juniors. I hope one day we will be in top 100 . Currently I am ranked at 9903 worldwide on SPOJ .

Still practicing more and more problems ... A long way to go from now.... The journey has just begun ;)