Hackerrank university code sprint #2 - Bronze medal

Feb. 20, 2017

Julia was so happy to know that she got a bronze medal for her most favorite codesprint - university codesprint. She scored 50, spent more than 15 hours, compared to highest rank scoring 100%, score 430, in less than 3 hours, she has a long way to go. But she knew that how hard she has to work on, to make that extra 30 points, her last university codesprint was 20 points, because she spent over 10 hours to work on hard algorithm array construction, ended up scoring 0 on the algorithm.

The university codesprint is by far most challenge codesprint one.

She did look up ranking in Canada, and tried to learn through leaderboard, she ranks at 38, and also she found a good article to read from Bai Li, ranking , score 179.80, 245/6591.

Read his blog about competition programming to talk about rankings.

Study other players, and try to figure out how they got so advanced skills in competitive programming. 


Bai Li - HackerRank
How to succeed in your intern?
Erick Lin - How does an undergraduate do?

Hieu Le

Corey Chen

Marek Cygan
Abu Naser Bikas

competitive programming blog

Hackerrank Game of Two Stacks - in the contest

Feb. 19, 2017

Introduction

This is by far most challenge problem Julia has in last week, and she likes the difficult level of university codesprint. She understood that she should have more reasoning what she can do, after she made an effort to gain 10 points of maximum 30 points. 30% success rate tells that most of people did not push their analytical ability to the most, Julia could not believe that she can find optimal solution, but playing game is like a real life experience, define the rules, how to play against the rules to your best benefit. Play safe to get some points first, since Julia spent hours to debug the code for extreme test cases, then Julia ran short of time to think about the optimal solution.

In terms of growth mindset, how to grow from a 30% performance on first medium level today, in 3 months or 6 months, become a 60% or 100% performance on a first medium level? Recently, Julia did some study on this through sport performance coaching.

In the contest

Her C# submission only made 30% of maximum score, but she spent hours to make it best, learned the importance to avoid complicate code.

Feb. 20, 2017
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Search Canada ranking board on university codesprint #2, go over one by one in Canada, Julia ranks at 38.
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Find Bai Li, ranking , score 179.80, 245/6591
->
Read his blog about competition programming to talk about rankings. The link is here for the talk about competitive programming.

Hackerrank the story of tree - in contest

Feb. 19, 2017

Introduction 
Julia spent over a few hours to work on the algorithm - the story of tree, she really learned an important lesson about understanding a graph. She had fun to play with code, after a few hours, she scored points of 6, and then she continued to work on, scored up to 12 of maximum 50.

It is a struggle to push herself to think about the timeout issue, where to find the breakthrough to solve the timeout? Julia knew that the algorithm with a medium level should not be complicate, she enjoyed her struggle through early in the morning.

The algorithm is the second medium level one in university codesprint #2 on hackerrank. The contest is Julia's most favorite one, she still remembered the lesson she learned last year. It is hard and she remembered the pain as a programmer but she did better this time.

In the contest

Here is the C# code she submitted, the last submission over 10 of them in the contest. She continued to work on issues, through a few hours work after she scored points 6, she learned the important lesson how to make code simple, more simple, therefore, she can try some new idea.

What she missed is the time complexity of algorithm.

Julia got familiar with graph implementation, she knew that graph can be in any form, maybe, she does not have time to define node, edges, all she has time to make a list of hashtables. But it is a graph she likes to write for herself.