I am happy with my own performance this time (generally happy - except problem c), but I can give you a piece of advice - at least what I did.
a) you do need IQ, that's true. Good news is that you can develop it and even if it is difficult, but getting more used to solving this kind of problems you get better with it even if you general IQ doesn't change. b) you need a LOT of work. This is key and this is even more important that IQ. For myself I decided that there are two essential skills you need to get good performance. Skill 1 is figuring out the algorithm for the problem. Skill 2 is coding algorithm quickly and bug-free. These two skills are actually different - you can train one without the other. Skill 2 is more easier to train. Why? Because you can reuse the same problems to train skill 2. Skill 1 can be trained only by looking at new problems. What I do is just solving problems (of course after taking some algorithms classes at coursera, udacity and edx). When I encounter problem first time my goal is to solve it withing one hour (no matter how difficult). If I succeed, I never come back to this problem. If I fail, then a) I still finish solution, however long it takes. b) I put this problem into list for training Skill 2. But the time budget is reduced to 30 minutes. I give it a break for 10 days and after 10 days cool-off period I put it back into my problems pool. If I get it out of the pool again, I, supposedly, know how to solve it algorithmically, so I only train Skill 2, which means code the algorithm within 30 minutes however difficult it is. If I do that, I drop the problem. If not - another 10 days cool off period and another try. Important ideas here is: - if you solved problem once, it doesn't make this problem useless for you - you still can train your skill 2 with it. - ability to code algorithm fast and bug free is extremely important in this competition. Don't underestimate - it is important to learn to find algorithms for problems and this is creative part, which is difficult to learn, BUT however good you are at finding algorithms, if to implement it you need to spend a few hours with debugger - it just doesn't matter. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Code Jam" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-code/8109f3fa-8918-46e1-811f-ef52beb2d1f1%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
