Graphs
A graph is a data structure that specializes in relationships, as it easily conveys how data is connected.
Here is a visualization of our Facebook network:
Each person is represented by a node, and each line indicates a friendship with another person. In graph jargon, each node is called a vertex, and each line is called an edge. Vertices that are connected by an edge are said to be adjacent to each other.
There are a number of ways that a graph can be implemented, but one of the simplest ways is using a hash table (see Chapter 7, Blazing Fast Lookup with Hash Tables). Here’s a bare-bones Ruby implementation of our social network:
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