OJ Board

Please tell if I am the only one that hates his problems...?

Shariar Manzoor -> Nothing personal, ok, just trying to change your point of view, I really think your problem statments are not the bests..., if you do not agree, please remeber the factorial of negative numbers, or just the new problem Maximum Sum (II), thanx in advance...

You should not judge Shahriar Manzoor on the few problems that were not so good. He wrote a lot of very nice problems.

Yes, and I know it, but I am only refering to those that were not so good...,

And he is still a volunteer. if people keeps pissing him off telling him that his statements sucks he might simply say: "ok.... so just forget about it... i dont submit any problems anymore"... then what? we lose one who keeps us busy doing something on saturdays....

Hello,
I am impressed getting so much attention in last few days. I remember all the bad problems that I made and simply I do not find enough time to fix them. Even as I write this thread I am thinking about two new problems so you just have to solve my bad problems to get a good rank . It is always very difficult to set easy interesting problems. But it is very easy to make blunders while setting an easy problem.

The current description of maximum sum (II) is ok I think. Please point what u think is not ok. Then I can reply.

This is the line that made me lose my time during the contest:

A valid sub-sequence must have a single number in it.

Listen, I am not trying to judge you, I admire you and all Valladolid OJ members, I am just saying that you must be more careful writing problems...

Congratulations, and continue making us happy Shariar, I hope you understand what I am trying to say, ...

Yes the problem statement was wrong during contest. The red line you specified means

if input is "0 0 0 0 0 0" the output should be "0", not a blank line. Actually this is problem not a problem of algorithm just applying common sense. If this line was not there there would have been another confusion on what would be the output for "0 0 0 0 0".

cheers


-Shahriar

Yes the problem statement was wrong during contest. The red line you specified means

if input is "0 0 0 0 0 0" the output should be "0", not a blank line. Actually this is problem not a problem of algorithm just applying common sense. If this line was not there there would have been another confusion on what would be the output for "0 0 0 0 0".

Umm! Listen! The spelling of my name is "Shahriar"

cheers


-Sha(h)riar

I would be glad to see this:

A valid sub-sequence must have at least a single number in it.

instead.

Thanks for your reply Shahriar.

neno_uci wrote:I would be glad to see this:

A valid sub-sequence must have at least a single number in it.

instead.

Thanks for your reply Shahriar.

Hei, hot bangladesh guys !
Enough.
All right.
Let's solve problems instead of bait each other. ))

Hello, everyone.

I've been solving problems by Shahriar Manzoor for about three years. There were so many really brilliant ones (recent example - 10636 Stretching Geometry) that I can't imagine to feel anything but thanks to him.

They say Maximum Sum(II) statement is wrong... I solved it with my first submission and think that the statement says absolutely everything that is needed.

They say Contemplation! Algebra statement should say more... I haven't solved it yet - still TLE. I've read the post about it and was very upset that I couldn't guess myself about complex solution . The problem is really nice. And do you really want to solve only problems where you needn't use your brains a bit? So, to my mind Mr. Manzoor was right not to say anything about values of a and b.

The only inconvenience about Shahriar Manzoor's problems that I remember was 10402 Triangle Covering and it is not problem with statement but with judge solution. But he did lots of problems and only few 'blunders' - so I guess his bug-percent is 0 (rounded to nearest integer ).

Please don't stop it, Mr. Manzoor! We're waiting for your new tricky problems!

Best regards,
Andrey.

Maximum Sum(II) was wrong during the contest, as it had a statement that didn't really make sense:

In a given a sequence of non-negative integers you will have to find such a sequence in it whose summation is maximum. Note that I am asking for a sequence, not sub sequence.

which was not the intended problem (by strict definitions of sequence and sub-sequence).

The way it is now, there is no confusion as what one was intended to do.

[By my interpretation, the problem as stated before was just to output the input sequence on one line instead of N lines as anything other outputs would be a sub-sequence of the original.]

Dear Mr. Manzoor,

I deeply enjoy the ideas behind most of the problems you post. From this point of view, you are a great problemsetter (one of my favourite ones ). Keep up the good work!

However, there is also the other side of your problems - the problem statement. Being a problemsetter myself I understand, how hard it is to write a clear and bug-free problem statement. Not being a native english speaker, I know the amount of work required to write a clear problem statement in English. But I also know that bad English may cause many solvers to misunderstand the problem or not to understand anything at all. And troubles mentioned in previous posts seem to be often connected with your problem statements, not with the ideas. (As a wild guess, I think it is partially because there are so many of them...)

A few examples:

Recently I solved "10655 Contemplation - Algebra". I enjoyed the problem very much. However, I supposed incorrectly, that a and b have to be integers (as it is common practice if nothing else is said, especially in case of very brief problem statements). I had to check the forum to find out my mistake. Still, the problem was nice and not too easy after I noted the fact. E.g. I still had to consider complex a,b.

Point: Sometimes it isn't a bad idea to be a little more specific in the problem statement. In this case, a sentence like "Note that a and b don't have to be integers" would make the problem more clear, while not much easier to solve. Still, there is one another way to do this: If you want to omit such details and make them a catch in the problem, the best way to do this is to state the rest of the problem very, very formally. In that way the contestant knows the given limits precisely and he shouldn't assume anything more. With vague problem statements like in 10655 this is a problem.

I did also solve "10656 Maximum Sum II" and the experience was horrible. This was clearly supposed to be the easy task in the batch. Wasn't. Reason: Bad and ugly problem statement. Confusing and unclear. The current version is already better than the original ("and I mean sequence" and bits like that), but it still isn't clear ("must have a single number in it", the word "summation", more sequences of minimum length?).

Please try to make the problem statements as clear as possible. It won't make the problems any easier (or, in some cases, much easier), but it will make them more fun to solve and less frustrating. Also, try to use as simple English phrases as possible and include a well-described example if not sure whether the problem statement is sufficiently clear.

Hope you will read this

good luck

I totally agree with misof. His statements should be used as guidelines by all problemsetter.

A problem should not be made tricky, by not stating something that might affect implementation. For example, if a question involves finding the fibonnaci numbers, then the range should be mentioned, so the solvers know whether Big Integer should be used or not.

Shahriar!
I'm with You!! I like tricky problems (even if I can't solve them - such problems I like the most!). Go on!!

Wojciech