P T H I N K F A ST S

Competitive Programming
From Problem 2 Solution in O(1)

ICPC Community
Building and Training

Mostafa Saad Ibrahim

PhD Student @ Simon Fraser University
Successful Communities

● Trainees must train hard individually

Individual ○ Collaborative training will make it much fun
efforts ● Take care of many quality and quantity factors
● Learn from mistakes - make use of others experience

● Do knowledge transfer / mentoring / coaching

Collaborative ● Organize contests / events / camps
efforts ● Teach Programming, Data Structures and Algorithms
● Attracting new promising candidates

● Fund for the events

● Fund for official contests: registration/transportations
Institute ● Resources: Permanent / temporary (training / events)
support ○ Ask for small permanent lab for ACM
● Handle date conflicts with exams/assignments
Training common issues

◼ Individual
◼ Guys with 700-1000 solved problems and still weak!
◼ No specific roadmap or keep switching between them
◼ Training while knowing problem category / level
◼ Focus on specific online judge
◼ Psychological Issues
◼ Young Communities
◼ Do a lot of ad-hoc training roadmaps / switches
◼ Tip: Select one roadmap and keep going with it
◼ Few resources / little official support
◼ Time to get rid of that!
Community Building: The CORE

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Building The CORE: Trainees

◼ The core (nucleus) is first fundamental part

◼ Don’t target getting many people in the first year
◼ Just ~6 guys of: Passion & Hard working
◼ Assume you are the first 1-2 persons
◼ Identify guys who are good in programming in your
class or other classes (or at least like learning)
◼ Convince them why this track is so important
◼ Keep going till find ~6 guys of interest/dedication
◼ Train together for a complete year : Follow my sheet
◼ My sheet will boost your level within a year
◼ After that, you know much about ICPC and Training
◼ Your online/onsite performance is key for next years
Building The CORE: Official Support

◼ Find a doctor who is so keen to help students

◼ Explain to him why this training is important
◼ What kind of support you may need
◼ 2-3 meetings yearly to inform about progress
◼ Talk to other staff
◼ Sometime TAs are barrier and talk negatively
◼ If know who do so, convince him why it is important
◼ More connections
◼ Let the core trainees visit the dean, inform him about your
efforts and what support they may gain.
◼ Better Ask the Dr to come.
Attracting newcomers

◼ Active Facebook page / contacts

◼ Teach programming & datastructure courses
◼ Identify active students / talk to them
◼ Events in summer/winter vacations
◼ Why problem-solving? First 2 videos here
◼ Ask popular figures to present such sessions
◼ Many from other communities would like to help
◼ Determine specific scope for the talk with speaker
◼ Basic thinking questions to stimulate them
◼ Binary Search: How to find a page in book?
◼ Game theory: Ad-hocs - Nim
Attracting newcomers: Marketizing

◼ Did some achievement in ECPC/ACPC?

◼ Ask Dean to put this news on faculty site
◼ Ask Drs of different classes to announce that
◼ Announce on faculty walls
◼ Party after ACPC to thank teams & draw dreams
◼ Planning event/contest/training
◼ Announce and encourage to attend / prizes
◼ Booth in entrance: Stop students & talk to them
◼ Community stars: talks / Success stories / Camps
◼ Use Institute Official support as possible
◼ Students trust Doctors/Key figures more than students
Vision based on my Juniors sheet

◼ 4 junior levels: Codeforces D2: A, B, C, D

◼ Complete roadmap: What to solve & learn + the order
◼ 800 problems of scales 1 - 5.5 / 10
◼ Covering all topics needed in codeforces D2, in order
◼ Except few of Div2-E
◼ Problems increase in difficulty
◼ A lot of recorded videos for problems solutions
◼ Several students followed its order and managed to solve
by themselves 95% of it (up to his current sheet page)
◼ Continuous refining based on feedback
◼ By its end, you are a fresh semi-senior
◼ Don’t call somene before that stage a semi-senior
Training Plan

◼ Each student has his own online sheet copy

◼ No skipping for problems - time per problem
◼ Trainee level: Junior-A, Junior-B, Junior-C, Junior-D
◼ Note: sheets are A, B, C1, C2, D1, D2, D3
◼ Junior-A prerequisites
◼ Programming 1 / STL (or actually much less)
◼ Encourage each level to train together
◼ Have lab. Meet together in the lab in specific time
◼ You all solve in your sheets and encourage others
◼ Collaborative training helps so much
◼ Ask for help from one solved the same problem
Training Progress

◼ Create a sheet to track all trainees (see)

◼ Each time a trainee move to new level, update sheet
◼ Need help in problem? Asked one who solved it/monitor
◼
Training Sessions: Levels A-D

◼ Focus n Juniors A & B

◼ Sessions topics follow the videos order
◼ Encourage them to watch the video 2-3 times
◼ If they understood, let them proceed with solving
◼ In session, check if they really watched? Stress on that
◼ Explain the topic. Solve few problems below video
◼ For C/D levels
◼ I think: Encourage them to depend on themselves
◼ Special Sessions to help understanding specific parts
◼ Help in hard problems
Training Sessions: Level Zero

◼ For who knows no/little programming

◼ Phase 1
◼ Variables, IO, conditions, basic looping
◼ Videos: My playlist (1-10) or Bucky (1-8 + 16-22)
◼ Practice from Assiut CF Problems (=URI here)
◼ Phase 2
◼ More Loops, arrays, and functions
◼ Videos: Mine (11-16), Find in bucky - URI Practice
◼ In parallel: Finish my playlist - sheet Div2-A
◼ My sheet will guide to all backgrund videos they need
Training Sessions: Level Zero

◼ Assiut created problems customized to

students background to attract them more
◼ Use polygons to create new problems
◼ Soon I will add detailed sheet page for them
Monitors

◼ Split mentors based on the resources

◼ e.g., per level - or group of say 5-10 students
◼ Encourage students to record the sheet statistics
◼ Check their code and give comments
◼ Push them to think more (think column)
◼ Coding/Debugging column should be 10-15 min
◼ Target 1st submission - don’t say it is offline solving
◼ Monitors should provide good support, but in smart way
◼ Don’t do everything for the trainee needing help
◼ Give some guidelines, then push them to get things done
◼ Encourage them to try harder and enjoy the progress
◼ Teach them to mark hard things as ‘TODOs’ / keep going
Contests

◼ Individual
◼ Online contests are important for your behaviour
◼ Encourage students to attend 1+ online contest per week
◼ Codeforces, AtCoder, CSAcademy, Topcoder, Hackrank..
◼ Teams
◼ Create biweekly contests for them from time to time
◼ Use Codeforces, A2oj, Hackrank, ...etc
◼ Avoid inventing problems - save your time
◼ Encourage them to build teams / how to build them / ..
◼ Let them try different people teams configuration
◼ Announce winners - little prizes - marketize
ICPC Contests: Be ready

◼ Teams final configuration 3 months b4 contest

◼ Watch contest videos
◼ Build strong teams / diverse in topics
◼ Run some individual contests
◼ Measure statistics: How many from 1st submission
◼ Sort people based on stats
◼ Form initial teams based on that
◼ Advise members on what is good for the teams
◼ There many other ways: Ask E.g. in GUC/AinShams
◼ Do lots of team contests
◼ Each team prepare his single own library
◼ Each team practice his own strategy
Community Continuity

◼ One of the real challenges is how to keep the

community strong
◼ E.g. FCICU was strong for some time, but not nowadays
◼ Real Leaders think about the long-term sustainability
◼ Community Structure and Elections
◼ Define structure per year or term
◼ Elect the people / discuss sustainability, goals, milestones
◼ Teach new trainees to give back the favor
◼ Come and help others - dedicate time
◼ Nothing like internal feelings of helping others
Beyond technical concerns

◼ Psychological Issues
◼ Typically trainees suffer from such issues
◼ Mentors / Leaders: Keep talking/advicing with them
◼ Frustrations (slow progress, can’t solve, online perform)
◼ Worrying about the Appearance & Failure
◼ ‘Should I stop’ Dilemma?
◼ Seniors: 1st or nothing / No breaks
◼ Psychological barriers: Hating probability/geometry
◼ Many more!
◼ Study-ACM Balance!
◼ Give them tips - Read
Messages for juniors

◼ Messages
◼ Secrets of Success
◼ You can be great by yourselves
◼ You don’t need massive follow up
◼ I know guys finished the whole by themselves
◼ You need to try seriously before asking for help
◼ Don’t be shy to ask others (on FB or whatever)
◼ Don’t compare yourself to others
◼ Participate in contests - don’t think in your ranking image
◼ Return the favor: Transfer knowledge - help others
Misc

◼ Another Path for community building

◼ After building the core
◼ Go and ask one of the available community to help you
duplicate their training
◼ E.g. tells you what to teach, which problems to use,
what levels to divide students E.g. Ain Shams, Assiut
Acknowledgement

◼ Thanks to helpful suggestions :)

◼ Eng Islam Al Aarag (GUC)
◼ Eng Sara Elkadi (Mansoura)
◼ Eng Ayman Salah / Eng Hussien Ibrahiem (Assiut)
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