Graph Analysis and Visualization: Discovering Business Opportunity in Linked Data

Glossary

Acyclic Graph

A graph that contains no cycles if links are followed from any node through any others.

Adjacency Matrix

A table where all nodes are assigned both a row and column, and a non-zero value in a cell represents a link between the row node and column node.

Adjacent Nodes

Two nodes that are directly linked.

Betweenness Centrality

A measure of the importance of a node reflecting the number of times it is involved in the shortest path between each of the nodes in a graph.

Bipartite Graph

A graph where one class of nodes only ever links to a second class of nodes, and vice versa. For example, in consumer purchase data, customers may connect only through common products, never directly to each other, and the same may apply for products.

Breadth-First Search (BFS)

An algorithm that starts with a node and traverses each adjacent node in turn before descending another degree out, until the target node or nodes are reached.

Centrality

The importance of a node in the graph based on its connections.

Chord Diagram

A graph visualization technique for data with asymmetric bidirectional flow where nodes are arranged in a circle and joined by bands of varying thickness at each end.

Clique

A subgraph where each node is connected to every other node in the subgraph.

Closeness Centrality

A specific computational measure of the importance of a node in a graph based on shortness of path distance to all other nodes. In this form of centrality, a node is most important ...