Introduction to Graphs

CS 106B: Programming Abstractions

Spring 2022, Stanford University Computer Science Department
Lecturer: Chris Gregg, Head CA: Neel Kishnani

Slide 2

Announcements
Assignment 7 is due on Friday at 11:59pm
The last section is this week!

Slide 3

Today's Topics
Graphs - the wild west of the node-based world
How graphs are used for real-world problems
Map direction-finding
Dijkstra's algorithm
A* Algorithm
Internet routing and traceroute
Social networks
Product relationships (e.g., on Amazon)
Routing circuits

Slide 4

Graph Motivation 1
 Have you ever heard of a little company called Facebook? How about LinkedIn?
Companies that connect people together use a social graph to do so. Facebook has the world's
largest social graph, connecting well over a billion people together. Facebook keeps track of
connections in a graph data structure, which we will discuss today.

Slide 5

Graph Motivation 2
Have you ever wondered how your computer connects to other computers around the world?
You can see how this works with the traceroute command (Mac/Linux) or the tracert command
(Windows).
Let's look at connecting from Stanford to the University of New South Wales, in Australia:
 $ traceroute www.engineering.unsw.edu.au
traceroute to www.engineering.unsw.edu.au (149.171.158.125), 30 hops max, 60 byte
packets
1 csee-west-rtr-vl3804.SUNet (171.67.64.2) 0.296 ms 0.287 ms 0.275 ms
2 xb-nw-rtr-vlan2.SUNet (171.64.255.130) 0.441 ms 0.419 ms 0.413 ms
3 hpr-svl-rtr-vlan3.SUNet (171.66.255.147) 1.007 ms 0.997 ms 0.985 ms
4 hpr-svl-hpr3--stan-100ge.cenic.net (137.164.27.60) 1.024 ms 1.013 ms 1.045 ms
5 aarnet-2-is-jmb-778.sttlwa.pacificwave.net (207.231.245.4) 18.490 ms 18.486 ms
17.747 ms
6 et-2-0-0.pe1.a.hnl.aarnet.net.au (113.197.15.200) 71.593 ms 70.828 ms 70.816
ms
7 et-2-1-0.pe1.sxt.bkvl.nsw.aarnet.net.au (113.197.15.98) 164.803 ms 164.611 ms
163.838 ms
8 et-3-3-0.pe1.brwy.nsw.aarnet.net.au (113.197.15.148) 163.997 ms 163.169 ms
163.981 ms
9 138.44.5.1 (138.44.5.1) 163.384 ms 164.376 ms 163.513 ms
10 libcr1-te-1-5.gw.unsw.edu.au (149.171.255.102) 164.283 ms 165.070 ms 164.893
ms
11 libdcsl1-swp-5.gw.unsw.edu.au (149.171.255.174) 164.322 ms ombdcsl1-swp-
5.gw.unsw.edu.au (149.171.255.194) 164.923 ms libdcsl1-swp-5.gw.unsw.edu.au
(149.171.255.174) 164.380 ms
12 srdh5it8r22blfx1-ext.gw.unsw.edu.au (129.94.0.32) 163.981 ms srdh4it2r26blfx1-
ext.gw.unsw.edu.au (129.94.0.31) 165.176 ms 165.102 ms
13 dcfw1-ae-1-3065.gw.unsw.edu.au (129.94.254.76) 164.405 ms 164.210 ms 165.111
ms
14 engplws011.ad.unsw.edu.au (149.171.158.125) 165.852 ms 164.604 ms 165.161 ms

It takes three hops just to get out of Stanford University. This is because there are a lot of computers at
Stanford, and many smaller networks inside the school.
A!er the first three hops, we get to a site called cenic.net. This is the Corporation for Education Network
Initiatives in California (CENIC), a nonprofit corporation formed in 1996 to provide high-performance,
high-bandwidth networking services to California universities and research institutions (source:
Wikipedia)
A!er that the next hop is to sttlwa.pacificwave.net, whose job is "to pass Internet tra"ic directly with
other major national and international networks, including U.S. federal agencies and many Pacific Rim

R&E networks"

The world's first undersea cables were in the 1850s (!) in the U.K. (under the English Channel) and linking
non-land-locked countries in Europe. They were used to send Morse code.
The first Transatlantic cable that was successful was laid in 1865, with 2300 miles of cable spools, laid
from England to Newfoundland.
Sharks really like the taste of undersea cables…
The next stop is Australia! How does this happen? Under the sea!
Once the route gets to Australia, it takes four more hops to get to the University of New South Wales, and
then four more hops to get to the computer I finally wanted to get to, in the engineering department.
The time to get to the final computer is 165 milliseconds.
Why don't we just use satellites?
Reason 1: Expense–satellites are so expensive, that it is cheaper to lay actual cable under the
ocean.
Reason 2: Time–most communications satellites are in geostationary orbit, 22,236 miles away from
Earth. Because of speed-of-light limitations, it takes almost 1/8th of a second (120ms) to get a
signal from Earth to the satellite, and another 1/8th of a second to get back. This means that the
total round-trip time is at least 240ms, which is slower than an undersea cable, which has to to less
than 10,000 miles (instead of over 40,000 miles)
Reason 3: Bandwidth–modern undersea cables use fibre-optic cables, which can transmit a
tremendous amount of data quickly. Satellites have limited bandwidth and cannot compete.
The bottom line (no pun intended): computer networks are graphs, and managing these graphs enable us
to connect the world's computers together.
Originally, the Internet was only a few nodes:
 Today's Internet has 20 billion+ nodes:

Slide 6

Graph definition

This was our tree definition:

Now that we are talking about graphs…

 A graph is a mathematical structure for representing relationships using nodes and edges.
This is just like a tree, but without any rules! I like to call graphs the wild west of the node-based world.
With graphs, we don't have any more notion of parents and children, and we allow cycles.

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Graphs can have cycles

Graphs do not have any notion of a parent-child relationship, and they can have cycles:

Slide 8

Graphs do not have roots

Graphs also do not have roots:
 Notice that graphs can also have directed edges, which means that you can get from one node to another

but not necessarily in the other direction:

Slide 9

Weighted Graphs
A graph is considered weighted if it has numbers associated with edges. Weighted graphs are particularly
useful for applications such as mapping between two locations, to take into consideration tra"ic,
distance, time, etc.
This is an example weighted graph of airline flights, with the weights representing the miles between

airports.

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Di"erent types of graphs: prerequisite graph

Graphs can also represent prerequisites:
Slide 11

Di"erent types of graphs: chemical bonds

A graph can be used to represent chemical bonds (even the drawings you are familiar with have nodes

and edges). Ethanol is shown below:

Slide 12

Di"erent types of graphs: road maps

A graph can be used to represent road maps, which is particularly e"ective for applications such as

Google Maps:

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Di"erent types of graphs: partisanship

 A graph can be used to represent partisanship:

Slide 14

Di"erent types of graphs: Boggle

We can represent Boggle as a graph:

Slide 15

Di"erent types of graphs: Circuit routing

When designing circuits, you can have the computer try to "auto route" the circuit, and it uses a graph of
 all the connections to do so.

Slide 16

Di"erent types of graphs: Amazon product

relationships
Amazon.com product relationships are graph-based
When you search for an item, you get related items you might want to buy.
For example, what did I search for to get these results?

Solution

Slide 17

Graph Terms
node: the objects in a graph
vertex: A vertex is another name for a node.
edge: The connections between nodes.
directed edge: An edge that only goes in one direction (e.g., from a to b) but not the other way. In a
diagram directed edges are arrows.
undirected edge: An edge that can go in both directions (e.g., from a to b and from b to a). In a
diagram undirected edges are lines.
path: A path from node a to node b is a sequene of edges that can be followed starting from a to reach b.
A path can be represented as nodes visited, or edges taken.
In the diagram below, one path from V to Z is {b, h} or `{V, X, Z}'
What are two paths from U to Y?
path length: The number of nodes or edges contained in a path.
neighbor or adjacent: Two nodes connected directly by an edge.
 Example below: V and X are neighbors.

A path from U to V and a path from V to Z:

Slide 18

Loops and cycles

cycle: A path that begins and ends at the same node.
Examples below:
{b, g, f, c, a} or {V, X, Y, W, U, V}
{c, d, a} or U, W, V, U
acyclic graph: a graph that does not contain any cycles
loop: an edge directly from a node to itself
Many graphs do not allow loops (you can't be friends with yourself on Facebook)

Slide 19

Reachability, connectedness
 reachable: A node is reachable from another node if a path exists between the two nodes.
connected: A graph is connected if every node is reachable from every other node.
complete: A graph is complete if every node has an edge to every other edge (this grows as O(n^2))
In the following graph, Z is not reachable from any node. Y is reachable from V, X, Y, and Z, but not U or W.

Z is notreachable
V is not reachable

A graph that isn't connected:

A complete graph:

Slide 20

Representing Graphs in Code

There are a number of di"erent ways to represent graphs.
The Stanford library has the BasicGraph class, which allows you to add nodes and edges. E.g,

#include "basicgraph.h"
BasicGraph graph;
graph.addNode("a");
graph.addNode("b");
graph.addNode("c");
graph.addNode("d");
graph.addEdge("a", "c");
graph.addEdge("c", "b");
graph.addEdge("b", "d");
graph.addEdge("c", "d");

The BasicGraph also has functions for finding a set of all edges, whether two nodes are neighbors, and
others.
Another way to represent a graph is through an adjacency matrix. An adjacency matrix is a square matrix
that represents all edges. For the graph above, the adjacency matrix would be as follows:
 0 0 1 0
0 0 1 1
0 1 0 1
0 0 0 0

Row 0 represents a
Row 1 represents b
Row 2 represents c
Row 3 represents d
The columns represent a, b, c, d

a has an edge to c only, so row 0 is 0 0 1 0

b has an edge to c and d, so row 1 is 0 0 1 1
c has an edge to d only, so row 2 is 0 0 0 1
d has no outgoing edges, so row 3 is 0 0 0 0
A third way to represent a graph is through an adjacency list. An adjacency list represents each node with
a list of its neighbors. There are many di"erent forms of adjancency lists. One might look like this for the
graph above:

a: c
b: c, d
c: d
d: <none>

Slide 21

Graph Algorithms
There are many, many di"erent graph algorithms
Some of the famous examples are:
Dijkstra's algorithm and the A* algorithm, and Breadth-First-Search
These are path-finding algorithms for weighted graphs that are used for finding the shortest
path between points. They are significant for applications like Google Maps. Here is a great
animation
Kruskal's algorithm for finding a minimum spanning tree
This algorithm creates a tree from a graph such that there is the least possible weight

between any two nodes.

Topological Sort
A topological sort allows scheduling of work based on dependencies between nodes (e.g.,
when doing laundry, the washer must finish before the dryer, and before folding).
The traveling salesman problem
There are many algorithms to solve this problem, but none are e"icient. The problem asks,
"Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest
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