Basic Definitions and Applications

Undirected Graphs

Undirected graph. G = (V, E)

■V = nodes.
■E = edges between pairs of nodes.
■Captures pairwise relationship between objects.
■Graph size parameters: n = |V|, m = |E|.

V = { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 }
E = { 1-2, 1-3, 2-3, 2-4, 2-5, 3-5, 3-7, 3-8, 4-5, 5-6 }
n=8
m = 11

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 Some Graph Applications

Graph Nodes Edges

transportation street intersections highways
communication computers fiber optic cables
World Wide Web web pages hyperlinks
social people relationships
food web species predator-prey
software systems functions function calls
scheduling tasks precedence constraints
circuits gates wires

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 Graph Representation: Adjacency Matrix

Adjacency matrix. n-by-n matrix with Auv = 1 if (u, v) is an edge.

■Two representations of each edge.
■Space proportional to n2.
■Checking if (u, v) is an edge takes Q(1) time.
■Identifying all edges takes Q(n2) time.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
2 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0
3 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1
4 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
5 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0
6 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
7 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1
8 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0

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 Graph Representation: Adjacency List

Adjacency list. Node indexed array of lists.

■Two representations of each edge.
degree = number of neighbors of u
■Space proportional to m + n.
■Checking if (u, v) is an edge takes O(deg(u)) time.
■Identifying all edges takes Q(m + n) time.

1 2 3

2 1 3 4 5

3 1 2 5 7 8

4 2 5

5 2 3 4 6

6 5

7 3 8

8 3 7

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 Paths and Connectivity

Def. A path in an undirected graph G = (V, E) is a sequence P of nodes

v1, v2, …, vk-1, vk with the property that each consecutive pair vi, vi+1 is
joined by an edge in E.

Def. A path is simple if all nodes are distinct.

Def. An undirected graph is connected if for every pair of nodes u and

v, there is a path between u and v.

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 Cycles

Def. A cycle is a path v1, v2, …, vk-1, vk in which v1 = vk, k > 2, and the
first k-1 nodes are all distinct.

cycle C = 1-2-4-5-3-1

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 Trees

Def. An undirected graph is a tree if it is connected and does not

contain a cycle.

Theorem. Let G be an undirected graph on n nodes. Any two of the

following statements imply the third.
■ G is connected.
■ G does not contain a cycle.
■ G has n-1 edges.

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 Every connected set has at least n-1 edges

• Start with n vertices and no edges.

• Add edges one after the other until the graph becomes connected.
• Each time, the number of connected components is reduced by at
most one.
• So to end up with a connected graph, a graph with one component,
you need at least n-1 edge insertions.

Every tree has n-1 edges

• Being connected, has at least n-1 edges.

• Since it contains no cycle, it has at most n-1 edges.
• Indeed, assume towards a contradiction, that it has n or more edges.
• Consider an edge and delete it. At least one new component is
created (why?).
• Therefore no more than n-1 edges can be deleted, contradicting the
assumption that at least n edges exist.

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 Rooted Trees

Rooted tree. Given a tree T, choose a root node r and orient each edge
away from r.

Importance. Models hierarchical structure.

root r

parent of v

child of v

a tree the same tree, rooted at 1

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3.2 Graph Traversal
 Connectivity

s-t connectivity problem. Given two node s and t, is there a path

between s and t?

s-t shortest path problem. Given two node s and t, what is the length
of the shortest path between s and t?

Applications.
■Maze traversal.
■Erdős number.
■Fewest number of hops in a communication network.

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 Breadth First Search

BFS intuition. Explore outward from s in all possible directions, adding

nodes one "layer" at a time.

s L1 L2 L n-1
BFS algorithm.
■L0 = { s }.
■L1 = all neighbors of L0.
■L2 = all nodes that do not belong to L0 or L1, and that have an edge
to a node in L1.
■Li+1 = all nodes that do not belong to an earlier layer, and that have
an edge to a node in Li.

Theorem. For each i, Li consists of all nodes at distance exactly i

from s. There is a path from s to t iff t appears in some layer.

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 Breadth First Search
Property. Let T be a BFS tree of G = (V, E), and let (x, y) be an edge of
G. Then the level of x and y differ by at most 1.

The broken lines, called “cross” edges,

connect nodes none of
which is an ancestor of the other in the tree.
L0

L1

L2

L3

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 BFS: Implementation with lists

Important: The list L[i] consists of all vertices at distance i

from s.

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 Breadth First Search: Analysis

Theorem. The above implementation of BFS runs in O(m + n) time if

the graph is given by its adjacency representation.

Pf.
■ Easy to prove O(n2) running time:
– at most n lists L[i]
– each node occurs on at most one list; for loop runs £ n times
– when we consider node u, there are £ n incident edges (u, v),
and we spend O(1) processing each edge

■ Actually runs in O(m + n) time:

– when we consider node u, there are deg(u) incident edges (u, v)
– total time processing edges is SuÎV deg(u) = 2m ▪

each edge (u, v) is counted exactly twice

in sum: once in deg(u) and once in deg(v)

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 BFS: Implementation with a queue

To implement the previous algorithm with a queue,

• use a single list implemented as a queue.

• Each time a new vertex is discovered is added to the end of the
queue.
• Always process the edges incident onto the vertex that is first in
the queue,
• until all the adjacency list of this vertex is exhausted.
• Then take this vertex out of the queue.

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 BFS Implementation with a queue

Source: Dasgupta, Papadimitriou and Vazirani, Algorithms

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 Depth First Search: recursive implementation

R is the connected component that contains u

Broken lines,
called “back edges”
connect nodes
one of which is
an ancestor of the
other. No cross edges.
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 DFS: Implementation with a stack

Initially all vertices are assumed to be unexplored. You can avoid

adding to the stack already explored vertices.

We add a vertex to the DFS tree when we delete it

out of the stack and brand it “explored’.

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 Connected Component

Connected component. Find all nodes reachable from s.

Connected component containing node 1 = { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 }.

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 Connected Component

Connected component. Find all nodes reachable from s.

R
s

u v

it's safe to add v

Theorem. Upon termination, R is the connected component containing s.

■BFS = explore in order of distance from s.
■DFS = explore in a different way.

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