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Directed Graphs

Directed Graphs

Learn about directed graphs and their representations.

Digraphs

A directed graph or a digraph is a graph where each edge has an orientation.

That means each edge begins at a source vertex and ends at a target vertex. We call the source vertex the tail and the target vertex the head of the edge.

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An edge in a directed graph
An edge in a directed graph

We also want our notation to emphasize this notion of directionality. So, we do the obvious and represent an edge as an ordered pair (u,v)(u,v), where uu is the tail and vv is the head of the edge.

In the context of a digraph, an edge (u,v)(u,v) goes from a vertex uu ...