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Mostafa Saad Ibrahim
Learning algorithms mainly starts in books and courses. Competitions help you practice these algorithms. Due to the increasing difficulty of competitions, you will learn many tricks in competitions won't be found in book.
An example may be Dynamic Programming. In algorithmic book, you may see 2-3 problems with different styles. In competitions, you may see like 50 different styles. Finally all of them will be solved using the core idea of DP. Similar point may be the flow problems...in competitions you will see variety of tricks to build the network flow graph.
Books = Knowledge
Competitions = Skills and varity of tricks
Finally, It is important here to differentiate between book algorithms and algorithmic skills. Many problems are adhocks (doesn't belong to well know algorithms). You can start competition without studying algorithms and learn algorithmic skills. You can be so strong before understanding a single algorithm. Even these skills will let you understand books algorithms faster and play with them easier.
Btw, I recently created a spread sheet of many selected problems for our juniors to solve. You may consider it for practicing. You don't need to study algorithms to start. You can learn little when start in Div2-C
goo.gl/unDETI
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Continue reading...
Learning algorithms mainly starts in books and courses. Competitions help you practice these algorithms. Due to the increasing difficulty of competitions, you will learn many tricks in competitions won't be found in book.
An example may be Dynamic Programming. In algorithmic book, you may see 2-3 problems with different styles. In competitions, you may see like 50 different styles. Finally all of them will be solved using the core idea of DP. Similar point may be the flow problems...in competitions you will see variety of tricks to build the network flow graph.
Books = Knowledge
Competitions = Skills and varity of tricks
Finally, It is important here to differentiate between book algorithms and algorithmic skills. Many problems are adhocks (doesn't belong to well know algorithms). You can start competition without studying algorithms and learn algorithmic skills. You can be so strong before understanding a single algorithm. Even these skills will let you understand books algorithms faster and play with them easier.
Btw, I recently created a spread sheet of many selected problems for our juniors to solve. You may consider it for practicing. You don't need to study algorithms to start. You can learn little when start in Div2-C
goo.gl/unDETI
See Questions On Quora
Continue reading...
