usaco-guide/content

Other Resources

• USACO -> CPH Topics
• Riya's website
• IOI Syllabus
• Darren's book
• Division-Specific Categorization
• Silver Categorization

Intro

• Introduction to Competitive Programming
  • Contest Format
  • Choosing a Language
  • Practicing and Debugging
  • Contest Strategies
• Prerequisites
• Introductory Problems
• Standard Containers Intro

Bronze

• Simulation (just do what statement tells you to do)
  • ex. The Lost Cow
• Complete Search
  • ex. Tracing
• Rectangle Geometry
  • ex. Billboard
• "Observation"
  • basically everything else (requires more thought)
  • ex. Mad Scientist

Silver

• Greedy
  • ex. Lemonade Stand
• Standard Containers
  • ex. Convention II
• Sorting
  • ex. Counting Haybales
• Binary Search (BinSearch)
  • ex. Convention
• Two Pointers (2P)
  • ex. Diamond Collector
• Prefix Sums (Psum)
  • ex. Breed Counting
• DFS
  • ex. Switching on the Lights
  • Occasionally, graph problems appear in bronze ...

Gold

• Dynamic Programming (DP)
  • ex. Time is Mooney
• Breadth First Search (BFS)
  • ex. Cow Navigation
• Shortest Path (SP)
  • ex. Milk Pumping
• Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) & Disjoint Set Union (DSU)
  • ex. Fencedin
• Topological Sort (TopoSort)
  • ex. Timeline
• Range Sum Queries with Point Updates
  • ex. Haircut
• Number Theory
  • ex. Cow Poetry
• Hashing (NOT COMMON)
  • ex. Cownomics
• Combinatorics (NOT COMMON)
  • Principle of Inclusion and Exclusion (PIE)
  • ex. Cowpatibility
• Sliding Window (NOT COMMON)
  • ex. Haybale Feast

Platinum

Just a sampling of the many possible topics.

• Trees
  • Lowest Common Ancestor (LCA)
    • mostly platinum but may appear in gold as well
    • ex. cowland
  • Heavy-Light Decomposition (HLD)
  • Tree Diameter
• Range Queries
  • Segment Tree
    • possibly useful for gold
  • Static Array Queries
  • 2D
• Bitset
  • ex. Lots of Triangles
• Slope Trick
  • ex. Landscaping
• Fracturing Search
  • ex. Robotic Cow Herd
• Geometry
  • Convex Hull
  • ignoring Cow Steeplechase II (Silver) ...