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VIEW QUESTION

CodeChef : From which sources did Rudradev

Basak, Pradeep George Mathias and Nikhil Garg

learn algorithms?More specifically, did they use online tutorials from sources like Topcoder,

Codechef or books like Cormen and Knuth?! If they answer this question then it

would be better. Curious to know about this!

I want to add one more question to this question about their plan?

MORE IMPORTANTLY, HOW THEY STRUCTURED THEIR TIME TABLE

DURING COLLEGE TIME FOR PRACTICING IN OPC's?

PRADEEP'S ANSWER

ANSWER AUTHO R

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Pradeep George Mathias, IOI-2008, ICPC WF 2011,12913 upvotes by Piyush Kumar, Samyak Datta, Balajiganapathi Senthilnathan,

(more)

Our story begins, and ends, with practice. Practice, passion and mutual

motivation.

Lets begin with a little background.

Year 2007 and 2008, I attend the IMOTC (International Mathematics

Olympiad Training Camp), the camp from which six students are chosen to

represent India at the IMO. Rud y also attends the same two years, and in fact

goes on to the IMO in 2008. In 2008, Nikhil attends the Physics camp, so we

know each other exist even before college.

My foray into algorithms came through the IOITC (International Olympiad in

Informatics Training Camp) in 2008. There, I learnt pretty much most

standard algorithms as well as had practice implementing them. All

in all, a great early start. As IOI prep, I did do a few chapters of Cormen (but

in hindsight, precollege maturity was not enough to really pick up and benefit

from it).

Nikhil joins our ICPC team in first year (we are with a senior of ours at this

point) and initially, he feels completely outclassed. I lend him my IOITC

Lecture Notes which cover a large part of groundwork. The two of us,

batchmates, take our own sweet time practicing online sites half-heartedly for

the next two years. Nikhil does spoj a fair bit during semester holidays in this

time.

Meanwhile, Rudy, our resident IMO medallist, is contentedly smashing all the

standard CS course-work . I should say here, that our IITD CompSc faculty

are definitely (one of) the best in the country. The thinking required for, and

the level of problems/tutorials are good enough to ensure that a bright person

flourishes. Finally, towards the end of 2nd year, Rudy begins TopCoderMarathon Matches (TopCoder Member Profile ) learning various tricks

through TopCoder Forums .

We now enter our third year, a nd form our team. From here on, we practice

largely through TopCoder Div1 500 point problems, reading Editorials,

discussing tricks we learn, and participating in every inter-college OPC

we find. In some, we are beaten by IIITH ( "ANY Dream"), some by IITM, and

some we win - but we keep the enthusiasm and set aside the time from "other

college stuff" (most of these are anyway on sundays, so they don't clash with

"lectures").

Whenever we came a cross something new, mostly through a problem online, it

would be tackled by (a) "Ooh, guys, check this out! ..."

(b) Putting in some library-code for it and sharing the code

(c) Finding a bunch of other problems that use the technique, and

consequently validating the written code.

There would also be a number of moments where one of us would go, "Hey,

you know how we generally implement X as A-B-C-D? W ell, if you look at it

Pradeep George Mathias

IOI-2008, ICPC WF 2011,12

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Downvote Comments 5+ 9

like so-n-so, the imple becomes as easy as P-Q?" Iteratively getting cleaner and

shorter imples comes a lot out of reading others' code.

At the end of the d ay, when looking at what we've accomplished, it seems that

we have learnt a lot from a load of resources etc. But really, the number of

things that the whole of comp. programming boils down to, is rather limited. A

vast majority of the work lies in reducing the problem from its given state into

one of the various forms that are available out there. And we've gotten good at

that, through practice.

As for "finding time", lets just say that when you are passionate about

something, you don't really have to go out of your way to find time for it . We

practiced our hardest during the 5 months from August 2010, to December

2010. One semester. Be passionate about coding for one semester, and

you're good enough to compete with the best! (p sst, here's a li'l secret, got

through observations not only of our team, but also kids practicing for the ioi:

give yourself about two weeks of truly intense (5-8 hrs/day) coding practice,

and you'll be so good that you won't even recognize yourself at the end of it).

Written 26 Jun, 2013. 37,266 views.

Upvote 913 Share

Comment

Akshat Bubna 9 votes (show)

"Give yourself about two weeks of truly intense (5-8 hrs/day) coding practice,

and you'll be so good that you won't even recognize yourself at the end of it".

That did happen with me. But you need to know what to practice.

Reply... • Downvote • • Report • 28 Jun, 2013Upvote Share

Tarun Kumar 1 vote by Thangavel Ramasamy

Can you please give some pointers ?

Reply... • Downvote • • Report • 30 Jun, 2014Upvote Share

Varun Agrawal 1 vote by Piyush Chauhan

Your answer is filled with loopholes:

1. You are one of 35 students in a country of more than 10 lac engineering

aspirants to get top-quality problem solving training from the best in the country

thanks to IMOTC and IOITC. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have this as

their 1st step.

2. You are from IITD which boasts one of the best CompSc depts in India. Again

think about all those who by some bad luck have had to settle for lesser

institutions and especially those that do not have good faculty.

While I agree that only practice makes perfect, you are only answering the

question with the assumption that everyone has had your kind of background.

Reply... • Downvote • • Report • 28 Jun, 2013Upvote Share

Pradeep George Mathias 4 votes (show)

Both your points are valid - I can't and won't deny them.

However, everyone has felt rather mediocre at some point in their lives - for

me in comp. prog., this was in my first two years of college (I remember

spending 3-6 days trying to cycle between optimizing and debugging a

codechef medium problem in 2nd year). I can relate to beating my head

against the wall!

If I answer a question on how does an average person become good at

coding, I may well have to go Anonymous just for credibility.

But here, the question asked for what the resources were: some of them

were privileged (IOITC/IMOTC/IITD environments), the rest was motivation

and practice (there are a lot of others in IITD who are great at coming up

with algorithms, but they aren't into the coding part of it. Oh well, thats their

choice).

Reply... • Downvote • • Report • 28 Jun, 2013Upvote Share

Varun Agrawal

I can relate to the last point. Their bad luck.

Reply... • Downvote • • Report • 29 Jun, 2013Upvote Share

Pradeep George Mathias

I said it was their "choice" - nothing about bad luck :P...

although, to be honest - just between you and me - that was also

my good luck ;)

Add a comment...

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Reply... • Downvote • • Report • 29 Jun, 2013Upvote Share

Varun Agrawal

By "bad luck" I was just making a tiny joke. :) I know they

made their choices and it turned out good for them,

fortunately.

And haha, you sure got lucky mate. :P

Reply... • Downvote • • Report • 3 Jul,

2013

Upvote Share

Siddharth Bhattacharya

I have spent my entire college life 3 doors away fromPGM, and by far his IITD experience though helpful

compared to an average college does provide him

benefits, most of us (at least in our department)

goofed off, merely passed our exams and that's it.

IITD can benefit, but if one doesn't will there isn't

much it can do. Add to it, he didn't graduate from CS

department where the best profs are, but from

mediocre Maths Dep, which was really much more

noise than one would wish. PGM was crazy, and

everyone thought he was from a different planet.

Reply... • Downvote • • Report • 15

Nov, 2014

Upvote Share

Ankesh Anand 1 vote by Tarun Kumar

"Putting in some library-code for our own." Actually, we are also trying to develop

some form of internal library too, could you explain the structure of your library

and how you went about building it?

Reply... • Downvote • • Report • 27 Jun, 2013Upvote Share

Nitin Garg 3 votes (show)

Pradeep George Mathias-Can you share your Lecture notes?

Reply... • Downvote • • Report • 26 Jun, 2013Upvote Share

Pradeep George Mathias 17 votes (show)

They've been compiled online here: http://www.iarcs.org.in/inoi/onl... by

the training faculty for the ioitc.

Reply... • Downvote • • Report • 27 Jun, 2013Upvote Share

Goutham Harsha

Many thanks mate :)

Reply... • Downvote • • Report • 9 Jul, 2013Upvote Share

Gautam Singh

Thanks man!! for sharing!!

Reply... • Downvote • • Report • 28 Oct, 2013Upvote Share

Nitin Garg

Thnx a lot....

Reply... • Downvote • • Report • 27 Jun, 2013Upvote Share

Krishna Oza

thanks pradeep for notes

Reply... • Downvote • • Report • 3 Jul, 2013Upvote Share

Gaurav Pathak 1 vote by Rahul Gandhi

Pradeep George Mathias yes, please can you share your lecture notes

Reply... • Downvote • • Report • 26 Jun, 2013Upvote Share

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