Graph Theory: Basic Graph Algorithms Explained

Introduction

A graph is made up of a limited number of vertices or nodes and a set of edges that link them. When two vertices are connected by the same edge, they are said to be neighboring. In real-world settings such as social media networks, online pages and connections, and GPS locations and itineraries, graphs have become a valuable tool for modeling and recording data. A graph may be used to depict a collection of things that are connected to one another.

A collection of instructions that traverses (visits nodes of a) graph is known as a graph algorithm. To discover a specific node or the path between two nodes, different algorithms are utilized. In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at some of the most often used graph algorithms, such as: breadth-first search, depth-first search, Dijkstra's shortest path, union–find, Prim’s, Bellman-Ford, and Floyd-Warshall.