Thursday, January 24, 2013

Editorial for TopCoder SRM 567

We have changed the way I release topcoder editorials, now I first submit it to the wiki, then the admins publish it. This saves up the time that was spent between me sending the editorial by email and an admin submitting it manually to the wiki and uploading pictures and fixing the links himself... So editorials shall be available a bit faster than before. In fact, you can access http://apps.topcoder.com/wiki/display/tc/SRM+567 right now to read the editorial without waiting for [[rng_58]]'s post.

Regarding the editorial. I think the explanation for div1 1000 really sucks. It is really a challenging problem to explain. The solution is seemingly easy and even trivial (just memoization). But go ahead and try to prove that it works, or to explain how to come up with the idea, and it really broke my brain.

Since the last two editorials had huge delays, I decided to not wait till I can find the perfect explanation for this problem and instead release something that is mostly ok (but sucks). At least this time we did not wait 1 week for the editorial...

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