Graph (discrete mathematics)

In mathematics, and more specifically in graph theory, a graph is a structure amounting to a set of objects in which some pairs of the objects are in some sense "related". The objects correspond to mathematical abstractions called vertices (also called nodes or points) and each of the related pairs of vertices is called an edge (also called an arc or line). Typically, a graph is depicted in diagrammatic form as a set of dots for the vertices, joined by lines or curves for the edges. Graphs are one of the objects of study in discrete mathematics.

The edges may be directed or undirected. For example, if the vertices represent people at a party, and there is an edge between two people if they shake hands, then this graph is undirected because any person A can shake hands with a person B only if B also shakes hands with A. In contrast, if any edge from a person A to a person B corresponds to A's admiring B, then this graph is directed, because admiration is not necessarily reciprocated. The former type of graph is called an undirected graph and the edges are called undirected edges while the latter type of graph is called a directed graph and the edges are called directed edges.

Graphs are the basic subject studied by graph theory. The word "graph" was first used in this sense by J. J. Sylvester in 1878.

Definitions in graph theory vary. The following are some of the more basic ways of defining graphs and related mathematical structures.

In the most common sense of the term, a graph is an ordered pair G = (V, E) comprising a set V of vertices, nodes or points together with a set E of edges, arcs or lines, which are 2-element subsets of V (i.e., an edge is associated with two vertices, and the association takes the form of the unordered pair of the vertices ). To avoid ambiguity, this type of graph may be described precisely as undirected and simple.

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