March 29, 2007
There are three qualifying rounds for the 2007 TopCoder Open Algorithm Competition, and if you place in the top 550 in one
I ranked 705; I didn't qualify. I feel very fortunate though that I've still got two more qualifying rounds where I could redeem myself.
The best way to describe my performance today would be: I sucked. To be honest, I expected to qualify today. The problems weren't all that hard. The difficult problem was too tough for me and I never bothered with it, but the easy and moderate problems were a cinch... or so they were supposed to be.
(The following narration won't make much sense unless you know the rules.)
I got fixated on a messed-up and error-prone approach for the easy problem which I couldn't even get to work properly (runtime errors). Then I panicked, opened the moderate problem, thought it was too difficult, then went back to the easy problem. I finally managed to submit a a solution which didn't have any runtime errors.
The moderate problem turned out to be not as hard as I thought. I hastily submitted a working solution, but I lost a lot of points because the timer started ticking as soon as I opened it. After that, I reviewed my solution to the easy problem and found a bug. I fixed it and submitted it again, which merited a 10-percent penalty for resubmitting. Later on, despite all my efforts, it would fail the system test because the whole approach was just plain wrong.
Discouraged, I didn't bother with the difficult problem and simply waited out the rest of the Coding Phase. The Challenge Phase did not turn out well for me either. I made one unsuccessful challenge, and got beaten to the punch to three would-be successful challenges by a matter of seconds! Argh!
(Edit: I missed the second qualifying round today... One last chance on Wednesday!)
I ranked 705; I didn't qualify. I feel very fortunate though that I've still got two more qualifying rounds where I could redeem myself.
The best way to describe my performance today would be: I sucked. To be honest, I expected to qualify today. The problems weren't all that hard. The difficult problem was too tough for me and I never bothered with it, but the easy and moderate problems were a cinch... or so they were supposed to be.
(The following narration won't make much sense unless you know the rules.)
I got fixated on a messed-up and error-prone approach for the easy problem which I couldn't even get to work properly (runtime errors). Then I panicked, opened the moderate problem, thought it was too difficult, then went back to the easy problem. I finally managed to submit a a solution which didn't have any runtime errors.
The moderate problem turned out to be not as hard as I thought. I hastily submitted a working solution, but I lost a lot of points because the timer started ticking as soon as I opened it. After that, I reviewed my solution to the easy problem and found a bug. I fixed it and submitted it again, which merited a 10-percent penalty for resubmitting. Later on, despite all my efforts, it would fail the system test because the whole approach was just plain wrong.
Discouraged, I didn't bother with the difficult problem and simply waited out the rest of the Coding Phase. The Challenge Phase did not turn out well for me either. I made one unsuccessful challenge, and got beaten to the punch to three would-be successful challenges by a matter of seconds! Argh!
(Edit: I missed the second qualifying round today... One last chance on Wednesday!)
Labels: :(, contests, programming, TopCoder
nakita ko sa isang webpage na marunong kang mag speedcubing. Im trying to learn it for myself using the layer by layer method. may iba ka pa bang kakilala na nagspeedcubing? why dont we make a club or meron na ba?