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Notes & Exercises: The Algorith Design Manual

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6

Chapter 1

1.1 Robots

An algorithm is a procedure that takes any of the possible input instances and transforms it to the desired output.

The Robot arm problem is presented where it is trying to solder contact points and visit all points in the shortest path possible.

The first algorithm considered is NearestNeighbor. However this is a naïve, and the arm hopscotches around

Next we consider ClosestPair, but that too misses in certain instances.

Next is OptimalTSP, which will always give the correct result because it enumerates all possible combinations and return the one with the shortest path. For 20 points however, the algorithm grows at a right of O(n!). TSP stands for Traveling Salesman Problem.

TODO Implement NearestNeighbor

TODO Implement ClosestPair

TODO Implement OptimalTSP for N < 8

1.2 Right Jobs

Here we are introduced to the Movie Scheduling Problem where we try to pick the largest amount of mutually non-overlapping movies an actor can pick to maximize their time. Algorithms considered are EarliestJobFirst to start as soon as possible, and then ShortestJobFirst to be done with it the quickest, but both fail to find optimal solutions.

ExhaustiveScheduling grows at a rate of O(2ⁿ) which is much better than O(n!) as in the previous problem. Finally OptimalScheduling improves efficiency by first removing candidates that are overlapping such that it doesn't even compare them.

1.3 Correctness

It's important to be clear about the steps in pseudocode when designing algorithms on paper. There are important things to consider about algorithm correctness;

Verifiability
Simplicity
Think small
Think exhaustively
Hunt for the weakness
Go for a tie
Seek extremes

Other tecniques include Induction, Recursion, and Summations.

1.4 Modeling

Most algorithms are designed to work on rigorously defined abstract structures. These fundamental structures include;

Permutations
Subsets
Trees
Graphs
Points
Polygons
Strings

1.5-1.6 War Story about Psychics

Chapter 2

2.1 RAM Model of Computation

This is a simpler kind of Big Oh where

Each simple operation is 1 step
Loops and Subroutines are composition of simple operations
Each memory access is one time step

Like flat earth theory, in practice we use it when engineering certain structures because we don't take into account the curvature of the Earth.

We can already apply the concept of worst, average, and best case to this model.

2.2 Big Oh

The previous model often requires concrete implementations to actually measure correctly, so instead Big Oh gives us a better, simpler framework for discussing the relative performance between algorithms. It ignores factors that don't impact how algorithms scale.

2.3 Growth Rates and Dominance Relations

These are the functions that occur in algorithm analyses;

Constant O(1) Hashtable look up, array look up, consing a list
Logarithmic O(log n) Binary Search
Linear O(n) Iterating over a list
Superlinear O(n log n) Quicksort and Mergesort
Quadratic O(n²) Insertion Sort and Selection Sort
Cubic O(n³) Some dynamic programming problems
Exponential O(Cⁿ^{}) c for any constant c > 1 Enumerate all subsets
Factorial O(n!) Generating all permutations or orderings

Notes:

O(n!) algorithms become useless for anything n >= 20
O(2ⁿ) algorithms become impractical for anything n > 40
O(n²^{}) algorithms start deteriorating after n > 10,000, a million is hopeless
O(n²^{}) and O(n log n) Are fine up to 1 billion

2.4 Working with Big Oh

Apparently you can do arithmetic on the Big Oh functions

2.5 Efficiency

Selection Sort

C

void print_nums(int *nums, int length) {
    for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
        printf("%d,", nums[i]);
    }
    printf("\n");
}

void selection_sort(int *nums, int length) {
    int i, j;
    int min_idx;
    for (i = 0; i < length; i++) {
        print_nums(nums, length);
        min_idx = i;
        for (j = i+1; j < length; j++) {
            if (nums[j] < nums[min_idx]) {
                min_idx = j;
            }
        }
        int temp = nums[min_idx];
        nums[min_idx] = nums[i];
        nums[i] = temp;
    }
}

int nums[9] = { 2, 4, 9, 1, 3, 8, 5, 7, 6 };
selection_sort(nums, 9);

2	4	9	1	3	8	5	7	6
1	4	9	2	3	8	5	7	6
1	2	9	4	3	8	5	7	6
1	2	3	4	9	8	5	7	6
1	2	3	4	9	8	5	7	6
1	2	3	4	5	8	9	7	6
1	2	3	4	5	6	9	7	8
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	9	8
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9

Insertion Sort

C

void insertion_sort(int *nums, int len) {
    int i, j;
    for (i = 1; i < len; i++) {
        j = i;
        while (nums[j] < nums[j -1] && j > 0) {
            int temp = nums[j];
            nums[j] = nums[j - 1];
            nums[j - 1] = temp;
            j--;
        }
    }
}

int nums[8] = {1,4,5,2,8,3,7,9};
insertion_sort(nums, 8);
for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
    printf("%d", nums[i]);
}

12345789

TODO String Pattern Matching

TODO Matrix Multiplication

2.6 Logarithms

Logarithms are the inverse of exponents. Binary search is great for sorted lists. There are applications related to fast exponentiation, binary trees, harmonic numbers, and criminal sentencing.

2.7 Properties of Logarithms

Common bases for logarithms include 2, e, and 10. The base of the logarithm has no real impact on the growth rate; log₂ and log₃ are roughly equivalent.

2.8 War Story Pyramids

Cool story bro

2.9 Advanced Analysis

Some advanced stuff

Inverse Ackerman's Function Union-Find data structure
log log n Binary search on a sorted array of only log n items
log n / log log n
log² n
sqrt(n)

There are also limits and dominance relations

Chapter 3

3.1 Contiguous vs Linked Data Structures

Advantages of Arrays

Constant-time access given the index
Space efficiency
Memory locality

Downsides is that they don't grow but dynamic arrays fix this by allocating a new bigger array when needed.

Advantages of Linked Structures

No overflow, can keep growing
Insertions/Deletions are simpler
A collection of pointers are lighter than contiguous data

However, pointers require extra space for storing pointer fields

3.2 Stacks and Queues

Stacks

(PUSH, /POP) LIFO, useful in executing recursive algorithms.

Queues

(ENQUEUE, DEQUEUE) FIFO, useful for breadth-first searches in graphs.

#define QBUFSIZE 64
#define T int

struct queue {
    T buf[QBUFSIZE];
    int start;
    int end;
    int size;
};

struct queue *q_create() {
    struct queue *q = calloc(1, sizeof(struct queue));
    q->start = 0;
    q->end = 0;
}

void q_enqueue(struct queue *q, T item) {
    if (q->size == QBUFSIZE) {
        printf("Queue Overflow");
        exit(1);
    }
    q->buf[q->end] = item;
    q->end = ++q->end % QBUFSIZE;
    q->size++;
}

T q_dequeue(struct queue *q) {
    if (q->size == 0) {
        printf("Queue empty");
        exit(1);
    }
    T item = q->buf[q->start++];
    q->size--;
    return item;
}

T q_peek(struct queue *q) {
    if (q->size == 0) {
        printf("Queue empty");
        exit(1);
    }
    return q->buf[q->start];
}

bool q_empty(struct queue *q) {
    return q->size <= 0;
}

void q_print(struct queue *q) {
    printf("Qeueu_Elements: ");
    for (int i = 0; i < q->size; i++) {
        printf("%i-", q->buf[(i + q->start) % QBUFSIZE]);
    }
    printf("\n");
}

// struct queue *q = q_create();
// q_enqueue(q, 1);
// q_enqueue(q, 2);
// q_enqueue(q, 3);
// q_enqueue(q, 4);
// q_dequeue(q);
// q_dequeue(q);
// q_enqueue(q, 5);
// q_enqueue(q, 6);
// q_print(q);

3.3 Dictionaries

Not just hashtables but anything that can provide access to data by content. Some dictionaries implement trees instead of hashing. Both contiguous and linked structures can be used with tradeoffs between them.

3.4 Binary Search Trees

BSTs have a parent and two child nodes; left and right. They support insertion, deletion, traversal. Interestingly, Min and Max can be calculated by seeking the leftmost and rightmost node respectively, provided the tree is balanced. BSTs can have good performance for most cases so long as they remain balanced. O(h) refers to the time being the height of the BST.

3.5 Priority Queues

They allow new elements to enter a system at arbitrary intervals.

3.6 War Story

Rather than storing all of the vertices of a mesh, you can share them between the different triangles, but connecting all vertices requires visiting each vertice once, a Hamiltonian path, but that's NP-Complete. Using a greedy heuristic where it tries to always grab the best possible thing first. Then using a priority queue, they were able to reduce the running time by several orders of magnitude compared to the naïve approach.

3.7 Hasing and Strings

Take a map to a big int, use modulo to spin around, and if m is a large prime you'll get fairly uniform distribution. The two main ways to solve collisions are Chaining and Open Addressing. Chaining is where each bucket has a linked list and collisions are appended. Open addressing looks for adjacent empty buckets.

Hashing is also useful when dealing strings, in particular, substring pattern matching. Overlaying pattern p over every position in text t would result in O(m*n). With hashing, you can hash the slices of t and compare them to p, and get slower growth. This is called the Rabin-Karp algorithm. While false-positives may occur, a good hashing function would avoid this.

Hashing is so important Yahoo! employs them extensively.

3.8 Specialized Data Structures

These include;

String Characters in an array
Geometric Collection of points and regions/polygons
Graph Using adjacency matrices
Set Dicionaries and bit vectors

3.9 War Story

They were trying to implement sequencing by hybridization (SBH), but ran into issues when they used a BST. Then they tried a hashtable, then a trie. Finally what worked was a compressed suffix tree.

Exercises

3.42

Reverse the words in a sentence—that is, “My name is Chris” becomes “Chris is name My.” Optimize for time and space.

void reverse_word(char *string, int length) {
    for (int i = 0; i < length / 2; i++) {
        char temp = string[i];
        string[i] = string[length - 1 - i];
        string[length - 1 - i] = temp;
    }
}

void reverse_words(char *string, int length) {
    printf("Before: %s\n", string);
    reverse_word(string, length);
    printf("After: %s\n", string);
    int start = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
        if (string[i] == ' ' || i == length - 1) {
            if (i == length - 1) i++;
            reverse_word(&string[start], i - start);
            start = i + 1;
        }
    }
}

char str[] = "My name is Chris";
reverse_words(str, strlen(str));
printf("Final: %s\n", str);

Before:	My	name	is	Chris
After:	sirhC	si	eman	yM
Final:	Chris	is	name	My

Chapter 4

4.1 Applications of Sorting

Apparently sorting is a big deal. There are a lot of problems that can be solved by using a sorted list, for example; closest pair, searching, frequency distribution, convex hulls, etc;

The fastest sorting algorithms are n log n, here is how it scales compared to an algorithm with quadratic growth. Even crazier is that this table divides it by 4 so it's not that ridiculous.

n	n²/4	n lg n
10	25	33
100	2,500	664
1,000	250,000	9,965
10,000	25,000,000	132,877
100,000	2,500,000,000	1,660,960

Whenever you have an algorithmic problem, don't be afraid to use sorting, because if it results in the ability to then do a linear scan, at worst is becomes 2n log n, which in the end is just n log n

4.2 Pragmatics of Sorting

There are some important things to consider when sorting; the order, keys and their data, equality, and non-numerical data. For resolving these, we would use comparison functions. Here is the signature of the C function for quicksort

void qsort(void *base, size_t nitems, size_t size, int (*compar)(const void *, const void*))

It takes a comparison function that might look like this;

int compare(int *i, int *j) {
    if (*i > *j) return 1;
    if (*i < *j) return -1;
    return 0;
}

4.3 Heapsort

An O(n²) sorting algorithm like Selection Sort can be made faster by using the right data structure, in this case either a heap or a balanced binary tree. The first initial construction will take one O(n), but subsequent operations within the loop will now take O(log n) rather than O(n), giving a final complexity of O(n log n).

Heaps

They can either be min or max heaps and the root node will dominate its children in min-ness or max-ness. It's also different in that it can be implemented in an array and still be reasonably conservative with it's space complexity. However it should be noted that searching isn't efficient because the nodes aren't guaranteed to be ordered, only the relationship between the parent/child.

Here's the full heap implementation;

#define item_type int

struct priority_queue {
    // TODO: Why did I make this a pointer?
    item_type *q;
    int len;
    int capacity;
};

struct priority_queue *pq_create(int capacity) {
    item_type *q = calloc(capacity, sizeof(item_type));
    struct priority_queue *pq = malloc(sizeof(struct priority_queue));
    pq->q = q;
    pq->len = 0;
    pq->capacity = capacity;
}

int pq_parent(int n) {
    if (n == 1) return -1;
    else return ((int) n/2);
}

int pq_young_child(int n) {
    return 2 * n;
}

// I mean technically we shouldn't need to provide the parent, since we can
// just call that ourselves
void pq_swap(struct priority_queue *pq, int n, int parent) {
    item_type item = pq->q[n];
    pq->q[n] = pq->q[parent];
    pq->q[parent] = item;
}

void pq_bubble_up(struct priority_queue *pq, int n) {
    int pidx = pq_parent(n);
    if (pidx == -1) {
        return;
    }
    item_type parent = pq->q[pidx];
    item_type node = pq->q[n];

    if (parent > node) {
        pq_swap(pq, n, pidx);
        pq_bubble_up(pq, pidx);
    }
}

void pq_bubble_down(struct priority_queue *pq, int n) {
    int cidx = pq_young_child(n);
    if (cidx > pq->len) {
        return;
    }
    item_type child = pq->q[cidx];
    item_type node = pq->q[n];
    int min_idx = n;

    if (cidx <= pq->len && node > child) {
        min_idx = cidx;
    }
    if (cidx + 1 <= pq->len && pq->q[min_idx] > pq->q[cidx + 1]) {
        min_idx = cidx + 1;
    }

    if (node > child) {
        pq_swap(pq, n, min_idx);
        pq_bubble_down(pq, min_idx);
    }
}

void pq_insert(struct priority_queue *pq, item_type x) {
    if (pq->len >= pq->capacity) {
        printf("Error: Priority Queue Overflow");
        return;
    }
    pq->q[++pq->len] = x;
    pq_bubble_up(pq, pq->len);
}

item_type pq_pop_top(struct priority_queue *pq) {
    if (pq->len == 0) {
        printf("Error: No elements in Priority Qeueu");
        return -1;
    }
    item_type top = pq->q[1];
    pq->q[1] = pq->q[pq->len--];
    pq_bubble_down(pq, 1);
    return top;
}

struct priority_queue* pq = pq_create();

#define ELEMENTS 8
item_type arr[ELEMENTS];

for (int i = 0; i < ELEMENTS; i++) {
    arr[i] = i + 1;
}

void reverse(item_type *arr) {
    for (int i = 0; i < ELEMENTS / 2; i++) {
        item_type temp = arr[i];
        arr[i] = arr[ELEMENTS - i - 1];
        arr[ELEMENTS - i - 1] = temp;
    }
}

void shuffle(item_type *arr) {
    for (int i = 0; i < ELEMENTS - 1; i++) {
        float r = (float)rand() / RAND_MAX;
        int idx = (int)(ELEMENTS * r);
        item_type temp = arr[idx];
        arr[idx] = arr[i];
        arr[i] = temp;
    }
}

void print_elems(item_type *arr) {
    for (int i = 0; i < ELEMENTS; i++) {
        printf("%d,", arr[i]);
        if (i == ELEMENTS - 1) {
            printf("\n");
        }
    }
}

void print_pq(struct priority_queue *pq) {
    for (int i = 1; i <= pq->len; i++) {
        printf("%d,", pq->q[i]);
        if (i == pq->len) {
            printf("\n");
        }
    }
}

reverse(arr);
for (int i = 0; i < ELEMENTS; i++) {
    pq_insert(pq, arr[i]);
}

print_pq(pq);

pq_pop_top(pq);

print_pq(pq);

4.4 War Story

Apparently calculating the price of airline tickets is hard.

4.5 Mergesort

Uses Divide-and-Conquer, recursively partitioning elements into two groups. It takes O(n log n), however the space complexity is linear, because in the following code, we have to allocate memory to construct a new sorted array. Doing so in place doesn't work because you're effectively destroying the previous sorting. However, when working with linked lists, no extra allocations are required since you can just rearrange what the pointers point to.

int *merge_sort(int *array, int start, int len) {
    int *sorted = malloc(sizeof(int) * len);
    if (len <= 1) {
        sorted[0] = array[start];
        return sorted;
    }
    int half = (len + 1) / 2;
    int *sorted_l = merge_sort(array, start, half);
    int *sorted_r = merge_sort(array, start + half, len / 2);
    int size_r = len / 2;
    int size_l = half;
    int i = 0, ir = 0, il = 0;
    for (; i < len; i++) {
        if ((il >= size_l && ir < size_r) || (ir < size_r && sorted_l[il] > sorted_r[ir])) {
            sorted[i] = sorted_r[ir++];
        } else if (il < size_l) {
            sorted[i] = sorted_l[il++];
        }
    }
    free(sorted_l);
    free(sorted_r);
    return sorted;
}

#define AL 10
int array[AL] = { 'y','z','x','n','k','m','d','a','b','c' };
/* int array[AL] = { 9,8,6,7,4,5,2,3,1,0 }; */
/* int array[AL] = { 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 }; */

for (int i = 0; i < AL; i++) {
    printf("%c-", array[i]);
} printf("\n");

int *sorted = merge_sort(array, 0, AL);

for (int i = 0; i < AL; i++) {
    printf("%c-", sorted[i]);
}

y-z-x-n-k-m-d-a-b-c-

a-b-c-d-k-m-n-x-y-z-

4.6 Quicksort

Quicksort depends on a randomly selected pivot in order to get O(n log n) in the average case. This is because if you select the same index for the pivot each time, there will always exist an arrangement of elements in an array that will be the worst case and result in O(n²).

The moral of the story is that randomization is helpful for improving algorithms involved in sampling, hashing, and searching. The nuts and bolts problem is a good example; if you have n different sized bolts and n matching nuts, how long would it take to match them all. Well if you pick a bolt randomly and make two piles based on whether they are smaller or larger, then you effectively ran a quicksort and were able to get it done in O(n log n) time, rather than having to test each bolt with each nut.

One important note about Quicksort and why it's preferred over Mergesort is because apparently in real world benchmarks, it outperforms it 2-3x. This is likely due to the extra space requirements of mergesort. In particular if you have to allocate memory on the heap

void swap(int *i, int *j) {
    int temp = *i;
    ,*i = *j;
    ,*j = temp;
}

void skiena_quicksort(int A[], int p, int q) {
    if(p >= q) return;

    swap(&A[p + (rand() % (q - p + 1))], &A[q]);   // PIVOT = A[q]
    int i = p - 1;
    for(int j = p; j <= q; j++) {
        if(A[j] <= A[q]) {
            swap(&A[++i], &A[j]);
        }
    }

    skiena_quicksort(A, p, i - 1);
    skiena_quicksort(A, i + 1, q);
}

void quicksort(int *array, int start, int end) {
    int len = end - start + 1;
    if (len <= 1) {
        return;
    }
    int r = rand() % len;
    int pivot = array[start + r];
    int mid = start;
    int s = mid;
    int h = end;
    while (mid <= h) {
        if (array[mid] < pivot) {
            swap(&array[mid++], &array[s++]);
        } else if (array[mid] > pivot) {
            swap(&array[mid], &array[h--]);
        } else {
            mid++;
            quicksort(array, start, s-1);
            quicksort(array, s+1, end);
            return;
        }
    }
    quicksort(array, start, s-1);
    quicksort(array, s+1, end);
}

#define LEN 10
/* int array[LEN] = {5,4,3,2,1}; */
int array[LEN] = {5,4,3,2,3,2,1,1,8,6};

for (int i = 0; i < LEN; i++) {
    printf("%i", array[i]);
} printf("\n");

/* skiena_quicksort(array, 0, LEN - 1); */
quicksort(array, 0, LEN - 1);

for (int i = 0; i < LEN; i++) {
    printf("%i", array[i]);
}

Usually in higher level languages like Python and Haskell, you would allocate new arrays to hold the new sorted elements. However, it becomes more challenging when doing it in place. This algorithm requires 3 pointers to keep track of the mid point, the iterator, and the high, then finish once mid passes h.

4.7 Distribution Sort: Bucketing

Two other sorting algorithms function similarly by subdividing the sorting groups; bucketsort and distribution sort. The example given is that of a phonebook. However, these are more heuristic and don't guarantee good performance if the distribution of the data is not fairly uniform.

4.8 War Story

Apparently serving as an expert witness is quite interesting. That and hardware is the platform.

4.9 Binary Search and Related Algorithms

If anyone ever asks you to play 20 questions where you have to guess a word, just use binary search and before 20 tries you will have narroed down the correct word. Counting occurences can have pretty good time if you want to have constant space growth; just sort the array then count the repeat ocurrences in a contiguous sequence. There's also a one-sided binary search in case you're dealing with lazy sequences, where you search first by A[1], then A[2], A[4], A[8], A[16], and so forth. You can also use these sorts of bisections on square root problems, whatever those are.

4.10 Divide-and-Conquer

Algorithms that use this technique, Mergesort being the classic example, have other important applications such as Fourier transforms and Strassen's matrix multiplication algorithm. What's important is understanding recurrence relations.

Recurrence Relations

It is an equation that is defined in terms of itself, so I guess recursive. Fibonacci is a good example F_n = F_n-1 + F_n-2…

Chapter 5

5.1 Graphs

Graphs are G = (E,V), so a set of edges and a set of vertices. Many real world systems can be modeled as graphs, such as road/city networks. Many algorithmic problems become much simpler when modeled with graphs. There are several flavors of graphs;

Directed vs Undirected
Weighted vs Unweighted
Simple vs Non-simple
Spares vs Dense
Cyclic vs Acyclic
Embedded vs Topological
Implicted vs Explicit
Labeled vs Unlabeled

Social networks provide an interesting way to analyze each one of these considerations.

5.2 Data Structures for Graphs

Which data structure we use will impact the time and space complexity of certain operations.

Adjecency Matrix You can use an n x m matrix, where each (i,j) index answers whether an edge exists. However, with sparse graphs, there might be a lot of wasted space.
Adjencency Lists Use linked lists instead, however it is harder to verify if a certain edge exists. This can be mitigated by collecting them in a BFS of DFS.

#define MAXV 1000

struct edgenode {
    int y;
    int weight;
    struct edgenode *next;
};

struct graph {
    struct edgenode *edges[MAXV];
    int degree[MAXV];
    int nvertices;
    int nedges;
    bool directed;
};

void initialize_graph(struct graph *g, bool directed) {
    g->nvertices = 0;
    g->nedges = 0;
    g->directed = directed;
    for (int i = 0; i < MAXV; i++) g->degree[i] = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < MAXV; i++) g->edges[i] = NULL;
}

// TODO: We have to read whether the graph is directed or not and
// insert edges twice
void insert_edge(struct graph *g, int x, int y) {
    struct edgenode *p;
    p = malloc(sizeof(struct edgenode));
    p->weight = 0;
    p->y = y;
    p->next = g->edges[x];

    g->edges[x] = p;
    g->degree[x]++;

    g->nedges++;
}

void print_graph(struct graph *g) {
    int i;
    struct edgenode *p;

    for (i = 0; i < g->nvertices; i++) {
        printf("V%d", i+1);
        p = g->edges[i];
        while (p != NULL) {
            printf("->%d", p->y);
            p = p->next;
        }
        printf("\n");
    }
}

struct graph *g = malloc(sizeof(struct graph));
initialize_graph(g, true);
g->nvertices = 3;
insert_edge(g, 0, 1);
insert_edge(g, 0, 2);
insert_edge(g, 0, 3);
insert_edge(g, 1, 1);
insert_edge(g, 1, 3);
insert_edge(g, 2, 1);

print_graph(g);

5.3 War Story

Apparently, computers were really slow before. That and it's better to keep asymptotics in mind even if it's about the same.

5.4 War Story

Apparently loading data itself can be really slow.

5.5 Traversing a Graph

When traversing a graph, it's useful to keep track of the state of each vertex, whether the vertex has been undiscovered, discovered, or processed.

5.6 Breadth-First Search (BFS)

This is a C implementation of BFS, however at the moment it doesn't really do much. The important thing here is that a BFS uses a queue to visit every node in the graph.

<<queue>>
<<graph>>

bool processed[QBUFSIZE];
bool discovered[QBUFSIZE];
int parent[QBUFSIZE];

void initialize_search(struct graph *g) {
    for (int i = 0; i < g->nvertices; i++) {
        processed[i] = discovered[i] = false;
        parent[i] = -1;
    }
}

void process_edge(T vertex, T edge) {}

void bfs(struct graph *g, int start) {
    struct queue *q = q_create();
    initialize_search(g);
    q_enqueue(q, start);
    discovered[start] = true;

    while (!q_empty(q)) {
        T v = q_dequeue(q);
        processed[v] = true;
        struct edgenode *p = g->edges[v];
        while (p != NULL) {
            T y = p->y;
            if ((processed[y] == false) || g->directed) {
                process_edge(v, y);
            }
            if (discovered[y] == false) {
                q_enqueue(q, y);
                discovered[y] = true;
                parent[y] = v;
            }
            p = p->next;
        }
    }
    
    free(q);
}

5.7 Applications of BFS

The one project we worked on, the "Six Degrees of Bacon", which is just a six degrees of separation problem. However, one interesting point to the "six degrees of separation" between all humans is that it assumes that all human social networks are "connected", meaning that there may be vertices on the graph that are not connected to the others and form their own little cluster. BFS works well for this, since it's basically a shortest path problem.

Other applications include solving a Rubiks cube so in theory you should now know enough to be able to create a solver, because each legal move up until the solved move should be connected on the graph.

The vertex-coloring problem assigns each vertex a label or color such that no edge links any two vertices of the same label/color, ideally using as few colors as possible. A graph is bipartite if it can be colored without conflicts with just two colors.

5.8 Depth-first Search (DFS)

While BFS uses a queue, DFS uses a stack, but since recursion models a stack already, we don't need an extra data structure. Here is the C implementation mostly just copied from the book.

<<graph>>
void dfs(struct graph *g, int v) {
    edgenode *p;
    int y;

    // No idea where this symbol comes from
    // They seem to be global
    if (finished) return;

    discovered[v] = true;
    // And these two as well
    entry_time[v] = ++time;
    p = g->edges[v];
    while (p != NULL) {
        y = p->y;
        if (discovered[y] == false) {
            parent[y] == v;
            process_edge(v, y);
            dfs(g, y);
        } else if (!processed[y] || g->directed) {
            process_edge(v, y);
            if (finished) return;
            p = p->next;
        }

        time = time + 1;
        exit_time[v] = time;
        processed[v] = true;
    }
}

This uses a technique called Backtracking which still hasn't been explored, but the idea is that it goes further down until it cannot process anything further, then goes all the way back up to where it can start branching out again.

5.9 Applications of DFS

DFS is useful for finding articulation vertices, which are basically weak points where removal will cause other vertices to become disconnected. It's also useful for finding cycles.

5.10 DFS on Directed Graphs

The important operation here is topological sorting which is useful with Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs). We can also check if a DAG is strongly connected, meaning that we won't run into any dead ends since we cannot backtrack. However, these graphs can be partitioned.

Chapter 6

6.1 Minimum Spanning Trees

Weighted graphs open up a whole new universe of algorithms which tend to be a bit more helpful in modeling real world stuff like roads. A minimum spanning tree would have all vertices connected but uses the smallest weights for all its edges.

Prim's Algorithm can be used to construct a spanning tree but because it is a greedy algorithm. Kruskal's algorithm is a more efficient way to find MSTs with the use of a union-find. This data structure is a set partition, which finds disjointed subsets. These can also be used to solve other interesting problems;

Maximum Spanning Trees
Minimum Product Spanning Trees
Minimum Bottleneck Spanning Tree

However, Steiner Tree and Low-degree Spanning Tree apparently cannot be solved with the previous two algorithms.

6.2 War Story

Minimum Spanning Trees and its corresponding algorithms can help solve Traveling Salesman Problems

6.3 Shortest Paths

In an unweighted graph, BFS will find the shortest path between two nodes. For weighted graphs the shortest path might have many more edges. Dijstra's algorithm can help us find the shortest path in a weighted path. It runs in O(n²) time. One caveat is that it does not work with negative weighted edges.

Another problem in this space is the all-pairs shortest path, and for this we would use the O(n³) Floyd-Warshall algorithm which uses an adjacency matrix instead since we needed to construct one anyway to track all the possible pairs. It's a useful algorithm for figuring out transitive closure which is a fancy way of asking if some vertices are reachable from a node.

6.4 War Story

Kids are probably young to know what the author is even talking about with these phone codes.

2	4	9	1	3	8	5	7	6
1	4	9	2	3	8	5	7	6
1	2	9	4	3	8	5	7	6
1	2	3	4	9	8	5	7	6
1	2	3	4	9	8	5	7	6
1	2	3	4	5	8	9	7	6
1	2	3	4	5	6	9	7	8
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	9	8
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9

2	4	9	1	3	8	5	7	6
1	4	9	2	3	8	5	7	6
1	2	9	4	3	8	5	7	6
1	2	3	4	9	8	5	7	6
1	2	3	4	9	8	5	7	6
1	2	3	4	5	8	9	7	6
1	2	3	4	5	6	9	7	8
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	9	8
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9

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