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Graph Theory Applications in Computer Programming

The world today is one where technology is growing at an exponential pace and understanding of these changes is difficult to keep track of and to analyze. Graph theory is a form of mathematics that allows for a large number of observed facts to be placed on a graph so that they can be analyzed and evaluated so that problems can be solved appropriately and in the most efficient manner. It would make sense that this would be a logical approach to take when it comes to analyzing the activities and problems that arise in the field of computer programming.

Early Computers

As computers were first developed, the technology was far behind where it is today. In fact it took a computer of immense size in order to achieve even the basic jobs of a computer today. It was in these early days that graph theory applications were used to analyze the ability of a computer to solve problems and also to evaluate problems and search for solution to these problems. Graph solutions had been used to solve a variety of problems faced by people for many years. It was an apparatus that allowed for the organized presentation of data that could be specifically analyzed and evaluated. Computers provided a lot of data that wasn’t able to be observed easily. However the results could be placed on a graph and then evaluated and changes made.

The graphs that we are talking about are not going to look like you might expect from a traditional graphing problem. These graphs relay data by showing people the information obtained in nodes or vertices and they are connected by lines which are called edges. Unlike many graphs, there are two options that each of the graphs. The information the vertices provide can provide no distinction between each of the nodes in a group. Or they can be directed which means that they have to move from one to another as you observe the graph.

Graphs have come to represent all of the available networks of data, computational devices and data as they appear in the flow of natural computation. A great example would be the linking structure of any website shown in graph form. As the pages of a website can be represented by graph theory with the web pages being connected with edges and on the periphery there are going to be the links that are pointing to each page. Similar approaches can be used in biology, computer chip design or many other forms of problems. Computer science has become significantly interested in the development of algorithms presented by graph theory.