7/11/22, 10:55 PM Introductory tutorials for competitive programming | CodeChef

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Introductory Tutorials For Competitive

Programming
Pre-requisite: Knowledge and understanding of basic constructs of a programming language

Mathematics
1. Basic Number theory 
Motivation and concept of modulo(mod)
Addition, subtraction and multiplication under modulo
Prime numbers(Some important properties)
Euclid’s GCD algorithm
Appendix: Division under modulo: 

2. Sets 
Venn diagrams
Set builder notations
subsets
Union, intersections, difference, membership
Set equality
Empty, Universal sets
Types of numbers and their symbols

3. Relations and Functions 

Relations: Intuitive idea - member of set A is related to member of set B
Relations: Bigger picture - subsets of cartesian products
Concept of domain, co-domain of a relation
Direction in a relation
No pre-image can have more than one image
Concept of functions
Concept of domain, range of a function
Functions: Dependent and Independent variables

4. Intro to combinatorics 
Principle of counting
Selection
Permutation
Factorials
Combinations

5. Logarithms 
Idea of what is exactly logarithm of a number.
Properties.
Examples
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6. Complexity Analysis  Programming Contests, DSA Camps ?
Notions of efficiency
How to measure efficiency - express runtime as a function of input size Later Allow
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Examples of measuring efficiency of some problems
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Comparison of functions
Big-O notation

Language Constructs - C++ - 1

1. Introduction to C++ 
What is C++?
Why do we need another language?
Basic Structure of a C++ program

2. Data types 
Recap of data types in Python
Declaring and initializing variables of different data types in C++.
Primitives datatypes in C++
a. int
b. long long
c. float
d. double
e. char
f. Bool
Overflow of values
Arrays
a. Motivation
b. Arrays in C++ including implementation
c. Difference between python lists and C++ array

3. Control flow 
Decision Making statements
a. if
b. else if
c. else
and, or, not operators
Loops
a. for
b. while

4. I / O 
Introduction(Motivation)
Concept of Streams
Input using cin
Input using getline
Output using cout

5. Functions 
return types
Parameters
a. By value
b. By reference

6. Recursion 

7. Notion of Structs 
Basic Idea of an user defined data type.
Motivational Problem
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Implementation in C++
Programming Contests, DSA Camps ?

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Motivational Problem
Linear Search
Binary Search
a. Algorithm
b. Complexity
c. Code
Think about implementing your own lower_bound().

2. Sorting 
Insertion sort
a. Algorithm
b. Visualization
c. Code
d. Complexity Analysis
Merge sort
a. Merging two small sorted arrays to get another sorted array(Algorithm).
b. The idea of Divide and Conquer
c. Algorithm
d. Visualization
e. Code
f. Complexity Analysis

Language Constructs - C++ 2

1. STL - Containers(stack + queue + priority queue) 
Stack(Motivational Problem, some important functions, LIFO)
Queues(Motivational Problem, some important functions, FIFO)
Priority Queues(Motivational Problem, some important functions)

2. STL - Containers(string + vector + pair) 

Strings(Basic idea, some important functions)
Vector(Basic idea, some important functions)
Pair(Basic idea, some important functions)
Appendix: Iterators

3. STL - Algorithms + Set + Map 

sort
upper_bound
lower_bound
set(Basic idea, some important functions of set container)
map(Basic idea, some important functions of map container)

4. Structs - Using them as comparators 

Basic Idea of comparators
Implementation in C++.

1. Dynamic Programming(DP) 
Concept of Subproblem of a problem and overlapping subproblems.
DP as Recursion+Memoization
Linear DPs
Multi-dimensional DP

2. Graphs and Graph Algorithms 

Modelling problems as graphs Want to get exclusive info on upcoming
Types of Graphs Programming Contests, DSA Camps ?

a. Undirected Graphs
b. Directed Graphs Later Allow
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Representation of graphs
a. Adjacency Matrix
b. Adjacency list
Depth First Search(Algorithm, Code, Visualization)
Breadth First Search(Algorithm, Code, Visualization)
(Optional) Shortest Path Algorithms(Algorithms, Codes, Visualizations)

3. Sieves 
Sieve of Eratosthenes

Credits: We would like to thank Swetanjal Dutta, Parth Mittal and Kushagra Arora from the community for preparing these

tutorials. In case you would like to contribute in any kind of content, or can provide improvements in the existing one, you are

most welcome. Feel free to get in touch with us on [email protected]

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