Importance of Graph theory

Graph theory is one of the subdivisions of mathematics, the main feature

of which is the geometric method in the study of objects. Its founder is
considered to be the famous mathematician L. Euler.

The application of graph theory until the end of the 19th century was lim-
ited to solving interesting problems and did not attract significant general
attention. Since the 20th century, when graph theory was formed into an
independent mathematical discipline, it has found wide application in such
fields of science as cybernetics, physics, logistics, programming, biology,
electronics, transport and communication systems.

Basic concepts of graph theory

The graph is basic. In terminology, you can find such a concept as a net-
work, which is identical to a graph. The latter is a non-empty number of
points, that is, vertices, and segments, that is, edges, both ends of which
correspond to a given number of points. Graph theory does not attach any
meaning to the meaning of edges and vertices. For example, cities and
those connecting them by roads, where the first are the vertices of the
graph, and the second are the edges. More importance of theory is attached
to arcs. If an edge has a direction, then it is called an arc, if a graph with
oriented edges, it is called a digraph.

In the terminology of the theory, the following concepts are also distin-
guished:
Subgraph is a graph whose all edges and vertices are among the vertices
and edges.
Connected graph is one in which for two different vertices there is a chain
connecting them.
Weighted connected graph is one that has a given weight function.
Tree is a connected graph without cycles.
Island is a subgraph that is a tree.

When depicting a graph on a plane, a certain notation system is used: the

selected vertex corresponds to a point on the simplest surface, and if there
is an edge between the vertices, then the corresponding points are joined
by a segment. If the graph is oriented, these segments are replaced by ar-
rows.
But you should not compare the image of the graph with itself, that is, with
an abstract structure, because one graph can be given more than one
graphic representation. The drawing on the plane is given in order to see
which pairs of vertices are joined by edges and which are not.

Some tasks of graph theory include:

The task of the shortest chain (replacement of equipment, placement of
ambulances and telephone exchanges).
The task of maximum flow (ordering traffic in a dynamic network, distri-
bution of work, organization of bandwidth).
Covering and packing tasks (location of control points).
Coloring in graphs (memory allocation on electronic computing ma-
chines).
Connection of networks and graphs (creation of a communication network,
analysis of communication networks).
Currently, it is impossible to program most tasks without knowledge of
graph theory. This facilitates and simplifies work with EVM.

Programming uses many frameworks and universal methods to solve prob-

lems, and one of them is graph theory. Its importance is difficult to overes-
timate. Graph theory in programming allows you to simplify the search for
information, optimize programs, transform and distribute data. Thanks to
the algorithms of the theory, there is an opportunity to apply and evaluate
them in use for solving specific tasks, to modify the algorithm without re-
ducing the degree of mathematical reliability of the final version of the
program.

An important property of a control system or model is a set of binary rela-

tionships in a set of actions and data units. These structures are the only
parts of the programs and the information they transform. Therefore,
graphs are a basic construction for a programmer.

Questions
1. How did you understand what graph theory is?
2. Where is graph theory applied?
3. Give an example from your own life when you encountered an informal
condition of a graph theory problem
4. Can you say that graph theory is essentially finding the optimal path?
5. What is a graph?
6. Imagine an example, you buy a train ticket and want to find the cheapest
but fastest, is this an example of a graph?
7. Name at least two examples of different types of graph
8. What is a tree?
9. What is a weighted graph?
10. What is a loop in a graph?