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So this problem is managed to be the one that is too difficult to have anybody solve it so far (for about one week) :-D
But is it the real purpose for this contest? to get people feel overwhelmed?
Good question, goalboy. Please keep in mind that the following is in no sense the official HackerRank position but my personal opinion.
HackerRank hosts a multitude of competitions in quite different formats: from blink-and-you-miss-it HourRanks and no-time-for-bathroom-breaks 101 Hacks to red-eye-sleepless marathons of World CodeSprints and heart-breaking-daily-additional-testcases of Weeks of Code.
With the longer competitions - CodeSprints and WoC - there is an actual opportunity to learn something new during the competition, and being able to apply it to improve your score and ranking.
And Project Euler+ stands here on its own: there is no time limits to solve a problem. You can explore it at your pace, read relevant (and not so relevant) scientific papers, and do your own research. The main benefit here - as I see it - is the educational aspect of the problem, where the task forces you to expand the horizon of your knowledge and abilities, both in mathematical and computer science fields.
For those of us who have just started in Project Euler, is there a previous problem that you can hint at as the one which can help to get better understanding of the topics involved in this one?
I don't think so. However I cannot claim that my solution is the only right solution.
My overall advice - if you are just starting with Project Euler - please choose the problems with the proper level difficulty for you. Unfortunately, the difficulty level stated in the problem descriptions may be misleading. For me, a better indicator of a problem difficulty is the number of people with 100% solution score for the problem. You also have to discount by the time period that the problem was available and the problem domain - whether you consider yourself as an expert in the number theory or graphs and so forth.
The problems currently available at Project Euler do cover a wide range of difficulty levels and almost everybody can find something interesting/challenging for him/her. Almost - may be with the exception of @uwi, @zemen, and @Gennady :)
well, I guess I meant "what previous problems should I pay attention to, to get a better understanding of graph colouring and related topics", in line with the original project Euler idea that subsequent problems teach you more and more about the topic
I've solved #193, which seems to be pretty hard based on %% solved, but I must admit graph colouring looks as a completely different beast to me
Don't give any hints. We will get there. Eventually )
Yea, the difficulty level seems indeed misleading.
I started from the new Euler problems.
I was surprised that for one problem I had to resort to an old maths book which I had last read by chance as an antique original in an Aachen mathematical institute's library many years ago. Now I could apply it to a real problem in my life. What a joy.. :-)
One of the newer problems seems to need implementing ideas from an < 10 yrs old arXiv paper (if you are not gifted enough to have them yourself :-) This came a bit unexpected. Until that point I did not expect research level knowledge to be needed. And it is listed as Medium. 8*)
I also started to solve Euler problems from the early numbers, to have an occasional morale boost. They seem much, much simpler so far.
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Project Euler #194: Coloured Configurations
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So this problem is managed to be the one that is too difficult to have anybody solve it so far (for about one week) :-D But is it the real purpose for this contest? to get people feel overwhelmed?
Good question, goalboy. Please keep in mind that the following is in no sense the official HackerRank position but my personal opinion.
HackerRank hosts a multitude of competitions in quite different formats: from blink-and-you-miss-it HourRanks and no-time-for-bathroom-breaks 101 Hacks to red-eye-sleepless marathons of World CodeSprints and heart-breaking-daily-additional-testcases of Weeks of Code.
With the longer competitions - CodeSprints and WoC - there is an actual opportunity to learn something new during the competition, and being able to apply it to improve your score and ranking.
And Project Euler+ stands here on its own: there is no time limits to solve a problem. You can explore it at your pace, read relevant (and not so relevant) scientific papers, and do your own research. The main benefit here - as I see it - is the educational aspect of the problem, where the task forces you to expand the horizon of your knowledge and abilities, both in mathematical and computer science fields.
Thanks Oleg, completely agree.
For those of us who have just started in Project Euler, is there a previous problem that you can hint at as the one which can help to get better understanding of the topics involved in this one?
I don't think so. However I cannot claim that my solution is the only right solution.
My overall advice - if you are just starting with Project Euler - please choose the problems with the proper level difficulty for you. Unfortunately, the difficulty level stated in the problem descriptions may be misleading. For me, a better indicator of a problem difficulty is the number of people with 100% solution score for the problem. You also have to discount by the time period that the problem was available and the problem domain - whether you consider yourself as an expert in the number theory or graphs and so forth.
The problems currently available at Project Euler do cover a wide range of difficulty levels and almost everybody can find something interesting/challenging for him/her. Almost - may be with the exception of @uwi, @zemen, and @Gennady :)
well, I guess I meant "what previous problems should I pay attention to, to get a better understanding of graph colouring and related topics", in line with the original project Euler idea that subsequent problems teach you more and more about the topic
I've solved #193, which seems to be pretty hard based on %% solved, but I must admit graph colouring looks as a completely different beast to me
Don't give any hints. We will get there. Eventually )
Yea, the difficulty level seems indeed misleading.
I started from the new Euler problems.
I was surprised that for one problem I had to resort to an old maths book which I had last read by chance as an antique original in an Aachen mathematical institute's library many years ago. Now I could apply it to a real problem in my life. What a joy.. :-)
One of the newer problems seems to need implementing ideas from an < 10 yrs old arXiv paper (if you are not gifted enough to have them yourself :-) This came a bit unexpected. Until that point I did not expect research level knowledge to be needed. And it is listed as Medium. 8*)
I also started to solve Euler problems from the early numbers, to have an occasional morale boost. They seem much, much simpler so far.