Cf: Theme One Program • Exposition 2
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2022/06/16/theme-one-program-exposition-2-2/
Re: Theme One Program • Exposition 1
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2022/06/15/theme-one-program-exposition-1-2/
All,
The previous post described the elementary data structure
used to represent nodes of graphs in the Theme One program.
This post describes the specific family of graphs employed
by the program.
Figure 1 shows a typical example of a “painted and rooted cactus”.
Figure 1. Painted And Rooted Cactus
https://inquiryintoinquiry.files.wordpress.com/2022/06/theme-exposition-pai…
The graph itself is a mathematical object and does not inhabit the
page or other medium before our eyes, and it must not be confused
with any picture or other representation of it, anymore than we’d
want someone to confuse us with a picture of ourselves, but it’s
a fair enough picture, once we understand the conventions of
representation involved.
Let V(G) be the set of nodes in a graph G and let L be a set of identifiers.
We often find ourselves in situations where we have to consider many different
ways of associating the nodes of G with the identifiers in L. Various manners
of associating nodes with identifiers have been given conventional names by
different schools of graph theorists. I will give one way of describing
a few of the most common patterns of association.
• A graph is “painted” if there is a relation between its node set
and a set of identifiers, in which case the relation is called
a “painting” and the identifiers are called “paints”.
• A graph is “colored” if there is a function from its node set
to a set of identifiers, in which case the function is called
a “coloring” and the identifiers are called “colors”.
• A graph is “labeled” if there is a one-to-one mapping between
its node set and a set of identifiers, in which case the mapping
is called a “labeling” and the identifiers are called “labels”.
• A graph is said to be “rooted” if it has a unique distinguished node,
in which case the distinguished node is called the “root” of the graph.
The graph in Figure 1 has a root node marked by the “at” sign or amphora
symbol “@”.
The graph in Figure 1 has eight nodes plus the five paints in the
set {a, b, c, d, e}. The painting of nodes is indicated by drawing
the paints of each node next to the node they paint. Observe that
some nodes may be painted with an empty set of paints.
The structure of a painted and rooted cactus may be encoded in the form of
a character string called a “painted and rooted cactus expression”. For the
remainder of this discussion the terms “cactus” and “cactus expression” will
be used to mean the painted and rooted varieties. A cactus expression is
formed on an alphabet consisting of the relevant set of identifiers, the
“paints”, together with three punctuation marks: the left parenthesis,
the comma, and the right parenthesis.
Regards,
Jon