What is this site?
Welcome to the Athenaion!
This site is a place to solve problems and maybe learn some things along the way.
There exist many other sites like this one, each with their own particular mission or flavor.
Here our main goal is to provide instruction and practice for topics in Mathematics, Geometry, Music, and Physics.
You can make an account to have your answers verified and track your progress!
More difficult problems have greater Gravitas. Solve them to grow your Wisdom.
Getting Started
Most problems on this site are designed to be solved most efficiently by writing a computer program. In fact, many problems are deliberately designed to be tedious to be calculated by hand.
This site does not compile your solution code directly (yet), and so you will need to find another alternative.
One possibility is to run locally on your own machine. Python releases their official interpreter for free download. Installation is quick and easy, then you can write programs in any text editor and run them via the command prompt.
If you don't want to download or install anything, there do exist quite a few options for entering and executing code directly via browser. For example, Online-Python.com
Once you have that figured out, you'll want to make a free account. Until you've made an account, you won't be able to see the actual testcases nor submit solutions.
Submitting Solutions
Each problem on this site shares the same basic format.
First, there will be a section of text explaining the problem, and then formally defining the Problem Statement. You will be provided some Test data which you will be expected to process. Test data is reset to semi-random testcases on each page refresh. Due to the scale of most testcase data you are encouraged to write some sort of computer program to analyze the data and generate a corresponding solution per the instructions given. However, you are allowed to calculate solutions in manner that you wish.
Once you believe you have the correct answer for the given data, paste your answer into the Your Answer box. Understand that because new testcases are generated on each page refresh, any answers given will only be compared to the testcases provided on that page. Also please select your coding language and paste your code into the Your Solution box. Note that your code will not be run locally on the server or checked against internal testcases (unless explictly indicated), but it will remain visible to you and others who have also solved the problem.
If you have provided the correct solution, then your completion of the problem will be recorded and you will be awarded points for completion!
If you have provided the incorrect solution, you will be provided with the answer that was expected instead of the one you provided. Take a look at it! It might prove valuable information in determining where you may have gone wrong.
Finding Solutions
For some problems the solution may not be readily apparent. You are always encouraged to first try to solve the problem on your own, using your own wits and knowledge to determine how things are working. If that fails you, feel free to look to other resources to help direct you towards the correct method.