Lecture 10: Graph Data Structures Steven Skiena Department of Computer Science State University of New York Stony
Brook, NY 117944400 http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/skiena
Sort Yourselves
Sort yourselves in alphabetical order so I can return the midterms efciently!
Graphs
Graphs are one of the unifying themes of computer science. A graph G = (V, E) is dened by a set of vertices V , and a set of edges E consisting of ordered or unordered pairs of vertices from V .
Road Networks
In modeling a road network, the vertices may represent the cities or junctions, certain pairs of which are connected by roads/edges.
Stony Brook Green Port Orient Point vertices - cities Riverhead edges - roads Shelter Island
Montauk Islip Sag Harbor
Electronic Circuits
In an electronic circuit, with junctions as vertices as components as edges.
vertices: junctions edges: components
Flavors of Graphs
The rst step in any graph problem is determining which avor of graph you are dealing with. Learning to talk the talk is an important part of walking the walk. The avor of graph has a big impact on which algorithms are appropriate and efcient.
Directed vs. Undirected Graphs
A graph G = (V, E) is undirected if edge (x, y) E implies that (y, x) is also in E.
undirected
directed
Road networks between cities are typically undirected. Street networks within cities are almost always directed because of one-way streets. Most graphs of graph-theoretic interest are undirected.
Weighted vs. Unweighted Graphs
In weighted graphs, each edge (or vertex) of G is assigned a numerical value, or weight.
5 7 9 5 12 unweighted weighted 3 3 4 7 2
The edges of a road network graph might be weighted with their length, drive-time or speed limit. In unweighted graphs, there is no cost distinction between various edges and vertices.
Simple vs. Non-simple Graphs
Certain types of edges complicate the task of working with graphs. A self-loop is an edge (x, x) involving only one vertex. An edge (x, y) is a multi-edge if it occurs more than once in the graph.
simple
nonsimple
Any graph which avoids these structures is called simple.
Sparse vs. Dense Graphs
Graphs are sparse when only a small fraction of the possible number of vertex pairs actually have edges dened between them.
sparse
dense
Graphs are usually sparse due to application-specic constraints. Road networks must be sparse because of road junctions. Typically dense graphs have a quadratic number of edges while sparse graphs are linear in size.
Cyclic vs. Acyclic Graphs
An acyclic graph does not contain any cycles. Trees are connected acyclic undirected graphs.
cyclic
acyclic
Directed acyclic graphs are called DAGs. They arise naturally in scheduling problems, where a directed edge (x, y) indicates that x must occur before y.
Implicit vs. Explicit Graphs
Many graphs are not explicitly constructed and then traversed, but built as we use them.
explicit
implicit
A good example arises in backtrack search.
Embedded vs. Topological Graphs
A graph is embedded if the vertices and edges have been assigned geometric positions.
embedded
topological
Example: TSP or Shortest path on points in the plane. Example: Grid graphs. Example: Planar graphs.
Labeled vs. Unlabeled Graphs
In labeled graphs, each vertex is assigned a unique name or identier to distinguish it from all other vertices.
B D E A C
G unlabeled labeled
An important graph problem is isomorphism testing, determining whether the topological structure of two graphs are in fact identical if we ignore any labels.
The Friendship Graph
Consider a graph where the vertices are people, and there is an edge between two people if and only if they are friends.
Ronald Reagan Frank Sinatra
George Bush
Nancy Reagan
Saddam Hussain
This graph is well-dened on any set of people: SUNY SB, New York, or the world. What questions might we ask about the friendship graph?
If I am your friend, does that mean you are my friend?
A graph is undirected if (x, y) implies (y, x). Otherwise the graph is directed. The heard-of graph is directed since countless famous people have never heard of me! The had-sex-with graph is presumably undirected, since it requires a partner.
Am I my own friend?
An edge of the form (x, x) is said to be a loop. If x is ys friend several times over, that could be modeled using multiedges, multiple edges between the same pair of vertices. A graph is said to be simple if it contains no loops and multiple edges.
Am I linked by some chain of friends to the President?
A path is a sequence of edges connecting two vertices. Since Mel Brooks is my fathers-sisters-husbands cousin, there is a path between me and him!
Steve Dad Aunt Eve Uncle Lenny Cousin Mel
How close is my link to the President?
If I were trying to impress you with how tight I am with Mel Brooks, I would be much better off saying that Uncle Lenny knows him than to go into the details of how connected I am to Uncle Lenny. Thus we are often interested in the shortest path between two nodes.
Is there a path of friends between any two people?
A graph is connected if there is a path between any two vertices. A directed graph is strongly connected if there is a directed path between any two vertices.
Who has the most friends?
The degree of a vertex is the number of edges adjacent to it.
Data Structures for Graphs: Adjacency Matrix
There are two main data structures used to represent graphs. We assume the graph G = (V, E) contains n vertices and m edges. We can represent G using an n n matrix M , where element M [i, j] is, say, 1, if (i, j) is an edge of G, and 0 if it isnt. It may use excessive space for graphs with many vertices and relatively few edges, however. Can we save space if (1) the graph is undirected? (2) if the graph is sparse?
Adjacency Lists
An adjacency list consists of a N 1 array of pointers, where the ith element points to a linked list of the edges incident on vertex i.
1 2
1 2 1 2 2 4 3 5 4 5 1 3 2 3 4
3 5 4
2 3 4 5
To test if edge (i, j) is in the graph, we search the ith list for j, which takes O(di ), where di is the degree of the ith vertex. Note that di can be much less than n when the graph is sparse. If necessary, the two copies of each edge can be linked by a pointer to facilitate deletions.
Tradeoffs Between Adjacency Lists and Adjacency Matrices
Comparison Faster to test if (x, y) exists? Faster to nd vertex degree? Less memory on small graphs? Less memory on big graphs? Edge insertion or deletion? Faster to traverse the graph? Better for most problems? Winner matrices lists lists (m + n) vs. (n2) matrices (small win) matrices O(1) lists m + n vs. n2 lists
Both representations are very useful and have different properties, although adjacency lists are probably better for most problems.
Adjancency List Representation
#dene MAXV 100 typedef struct { int y; int weight; struct edgenode *next; } edgenode;
Edge Representation
typedef struct { edgenode *edges[MAXV+1]; int degree[MAXV+1]; int nvertices; int nedges; bool directed; } graph;
The degree eld counts the number of meaningful entries for the given vertex. An undirected edge (x, y) appears twice in any adjacency-based graph structure, once as y in xs list, and once as x in ys list.
Initializing a Graph
initialize graph(graph *g, bool directed) { int i; g > nvertices = 0; g > nedges = 0; g > directed = directed; for (i=1; i<=MAXV; i++) g >degree[i] = 0; for (i=1; i<=MAXV; i++) g >edges[i] = NULL; }
Reading a Graph
A typical graph format consists of an initial line featuring the number of vertices and edges in the graph, followed by a listing of the edges at one vertex pair per line.
read graph(graph *g, bool directed) { int i; int m; int x, y; initialize graph(g, directed); scanf(%d %d,&(g >nvertices),&m); for (i=1; i<=m; i++) { scanf(%d %d,&x,&y); insert edge(g,x,y,directed); } }
Inserting an Edge
insert edge(graph *g, int x, int y, bool directed) { edgenode *p; p = malloc(sizeof(edgenode)); p >weight = NULL; p >y = y; p >next = g >edges[x]; g >edges[x] = p; g >degree[x] ++; if (directed == FALSE) insert edge(g,y,x,TRUE); else g >nedges ++; }
