The following figure contains the nodes with visited time steps for each node in the numerator and the finished time step for each node in the denominator.

To linearly sort the nodes, arrange the nodes in the descending order of the finished time steps as shown below:

This technique is best used for scheduling tasks or to specify preconditions for a specific task.

For example, consider the above nodes as the names of different courses. We can use a topological sort to specify that you need to take course B and C before you can take course E.