Algorithms For Dummies

 Exploring the World of Graphs

case, the graph is directed because two parents bear children. The flow shows the 

direction of heredity from a founding member to the current children.

Social media benefits from the use of graphs as well. For example, a whole indus-

try exists for analyzing the relationships between tweets on Twitter (see 

http://

twittertoolsbook.com/10-awesome-twitter-analytics-visualization- 

tools/

 for an example of just some of these tools). The analysis relies on the use 

of graphs to discover the relationships between individual tweets.

However, you don’t have to look at anything more arcane than email to see graphs 

used for social needs. The Enron corpus includes the 200,399 email messages of 

158 senior executives, dumped onto the Internet by the Federal Energy Regulatory 

Commission (FERC). Scientists and scholars have used this corpus to create many 

social graphs to disclose how the seventh largest company in the United States 

needed to file bankruptcy in 2001 (see 

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/ 

515801/the-immortal-life-of-the-enron-e-mails/

 to learn how this corpus 

has helped and is actually helping advance the analysis of complex graphs).

Even your computer has social graphs on it. No matter which email application 

you use, you can group emails in various ways, and these grouping methods nor-

mally rely on graphs to provide a structure. After all, trying to follow the flow of 

discussion without knowing which messages are responses to other messages is a 

lost cause. Yes, you could do it, but as the number of messages increases, the 

effort requires more and more time until it’s wasted because of time constraints 

most people have.