A Friendly Introduction to Graph Theory

This book introduces graph theory, a subject with a wide range of applications in real-work situations. This book is designed to be easily accessible to the novice, assuming no more than a good grasp of algebra to understand and relate to the concepts presented. Using many examples, illustrations, and figures, it provides an excellent foundation for the basic knowledge of graphs and their applications. This book includes an introductory chapter that reviews the tools necessary to understand the concepts of graphs, and then goes on to cover such topics as trees and bipartite graphs, distance and connectivity, Eulerian and Hamiltonian graphs, graph coloring, matrices, algorithms, planar graphs, and digraphs and networks. Graph theory has a wide range of applications; this book is useful for those in the fields of anthropology, computer science, chemistry, environmental conservation, fluid dynamics, psychology, sociology, traffic management, telecommunications, and business managers and strategists.