Overview

Published

2023-08-06

Week 12: Disjoint Sets; Intro to Graphs; Topological Sort

This week, we’ll complete an implementation of the dynamic equivalence problem that comes very close to linear time for find and union; then we’ll have a brief introduction to graphs; and we’ll wrap up the week with our first graph algorithm: topological sort

Learning Objectives

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

Understand how weighted union and path compression work, and how combined these give us a good implementation to solve the dynamic equivalence problem,
Describe the fundamental components of graphs and how trees are a special case of graphs,
Explain the difference between directed and undirected graphs, between cyclic and acyclic graphs, and between connected and disconnected graphs, and
Implement your own version of topological sort in C++.

To achieve this module’s objectives, please watch the introductory video (above), and complete the following:

Disjoint Sets (Dynamic Equivalence Problem),
Introduction to Graphs, and
Topological Sort.
Textbook, pp. 325; 355-359 (Chapter 13, Basic Network Algorithms)

Original author: Clayton Cafiero < [given name] DOT [surname] AT uvm DOT edu >

No generative AI was used in producing this material. This was written the old-fashioned way.