ASawe2.6Main's blog

Difficulty increases in USACO
By ASawe2.6Main, history, 2 years ago, In English

I am aware that many codeforces users are not from the United States, however, for the ones that are, do you think that the difficulty gap of consecutive years is getting bigger? It seems that USACO is somewhat (albeit slowly) mirroring the AMCs, where students' scores do not increase very much throughout the years even though they learned much new material due to the huge difficulty gap. Also, please do not discuss the ongoing USACO competition.

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2 years ago, # |
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It seems like USACO difficulty is staying relatively consistent, at least at the lower levels where I am. AMC, however, has gotten insane. I was able to get 110+ on some old AMC 10s, but the highest score I got on an actual recent exam was 85.

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    2 years ago, # ^ |
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    I'm not sure if it's just me, because I just started CP a month ago, and after a decent amount of practice every day, I'm able to solve 2019/2020 Bronze problems consistently, but I seem to have trouble on the more recent contest problems, such as the most recent February contest. USACO is obviously not AMC level in difficulty increase, but I was just wondering it seems to be slowly shifting that way.

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      2 years ago, # ^ |
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      I think USACO fluctuates significantly more than AMC, because there are only 3 questions so it is hard to maintain difficulty. Take, for example, this USACO bronze problem: (http://www.usaco.org/current/data/sol_evolution_bronze_open19.html) which appeared 3 years ago and is still probably harder than any recent bronze problem.

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        2 years ago, # ^ |
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        I agree. Although I think USACO is having a noticeable difficulty inflation, the difficulty fluctuation between contest helps to make it seem slightly worse than it actually is.

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    2 years ago, # ^ |
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    Just for a data point, i know some former usaco finalists and cf masters who struggled to full solve february gold.

    In my personal experience, going back and solving gold contests from 2017 and 2018 seems so easy compared to even modern silver.

    If you check https://codetiger.me/project/usaco/ for the difficulty estimates, which may not be extremely accurate, but you can surely see that the difficulty is going up pretty fast.

    I think in general, this is a good thing: it means there's starting to be a lot more interest in CP in younger audience. It does mean that everyone has to try a lot harder to stand out as well!

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2 years ago, # |
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The first 3 contests this year for silver were rather difficult. Most people say that at least one 2000+ problem was present throughout the contest. For each i was only able to solve roughly 3/2 of a problem. Last year i solved at most 1 problem. But, to be honest, I just think that some easier problems that they gave last year weren't present this year.

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2 years ago, # |
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I don't mind as silver problems are becoming a very good source of practice for me

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2 years ago, # |
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imo, AMC has been getting easier, not harder? At least, the AIME cutoffs have been getter looser (I've stopped practicing, so my scores have more or less stagnated, but I've comfortably made AIME 3x)

But I'm not in tune with math competitions like I used to be.

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    2 years ago, # ^ |
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    AMC 10 has gotten harder for sure; look at the DHR cutoffs this year, compared to last year (117/120 vs 132/126). Only qualifying for the AIME is arguably getting easier.

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2 years ago, # |
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It takes me 3 years to level P, but after recent contests I feel like I'm in level S.

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