For many students, the graph data structure can be intimidating and difficult to learn. In fact, some of their properties can be baffling to even experienced developers and computer science graduates who haven't worked with them for a while.

But graphs are interesting and integral, as they are a vital way of modeling and displaying information in the world around us. We can use graphs to do incredible things with computers. As an example, social networks are simply huge graphs at their core. Companies like LinkedIn and Google utilize many graph algorithms understand complex networks and relationships.

Before we dive into more theory, let us provide some motivation for learning graphs.