Graph Theory: Practice Problems

1. Suppose there are seven people in a class: Alice, Bob, Cindy, Doug, Ed, Francy, and Greg. Here is
a list of each person’s friends:
• Alice’s friends: Cindy, Doug, Francy
• Bob’s friends: Doug, Francy, Greg
• Cindy’s friends: Alice, Ed, Francy, Greg
• Doug’s friends: Alice, Bob, Ed, Francy
• Ed’s friends: Cindy, Doug, Francy, Greg
• Francy’s friends: Alice, Bob, Cindy, Doug, Ed
• Greg’s friends: Bob, Cindy, Ed
(a) Draw a friendship graph for this group.

(b) Who has the most friends in the group? Explain what this corresponds to in the graph.

(c) Who have the fewest friends in the group? Explain what these corresponds to in the
graph.

2. The following shows an acquaintance graph.

(a) What is the length of the shortest path from John to Sasha?

(b) How many paths are there of the shortest length from John to Sasha? List them.
3. In the accompanying graph, the vertices represent houses and two vertices are joined by an
edge if it is possible to drive between the two houses in under 10 minutes.

(a) How many vertices does the graph have?

(b) How many edges does the graph have?

(c) What are the valences of the vertices in this graph?

(d) Based on the accompanying graph, from house B which houses require a trip of longer than
20 minutes?

4. In the graph below, the vertices represent cities and the edges represent roads connecting
them. What are the valences of the vertices in this graph? What might the valence of city E be
showing about the geography?
5. Write down an Euler circuit for the graph below, starting from vertex D.

6. Examine the paths represented by the numbered sequences of edges in both parts of the figure
below. Determine whether each path is a circuit. If it is a circuit, determine if it is an Euler
circuit.
7. Which graphs below have Euler circuits? In the ones that do, find the Euler circuits by numbering
the edges in the order the Euler circuit uses them. For the ones that don’t, explain why no Euler
circuit is possible

8. Identify an Euler circuit on the following graph by numbering the sequence of edges in
the order traveled.

9. In the graph below, add wiggly edges to indicate a Hamiltonian circuit.

10. For the graphs below, find a Hamiltonian circuit starting at 𝐴𝐴.

11. (a) When going outside on a cold winter day, Jill can choose from four winter coats (two are
red), five wool scarves (one is green), four pairs of boots, and three ski hats (two are blue). How
many outfits might her friends see her in?

(a) If Jill always insists on wearing a red coat and a green scarf, how many outfits might her
friends see her in?

12. Draw a complete graph with 5 vertices.

13. Draw a graph that has a Hamiltonian circuit, but not an Euler circuit.
14. After a party at her house, Francine (F) has agreed to drive Mary (M), Rachel (R), and Constance
(C) home. If the times (in minutes) to drive between her friends’ homes are shown below.
(a) What route gets Francine back home the quickest? (Use the “brute force” method, also
called the method of trees.)
(b) What route would Francine have to follow to get home as quickly as possible, assuming she
promised to drive Mary home first?
15. A religious charity arranges free pickups for donated goods to encourage such donations but
would like to keep its pickup costs low. The accompanying diagram shows the estimated
amounts of time to get between the charity (H) and the locations of the three pickups scheduled
for Wednesday. (The graph is given twice since you’ll be applying two different methods.)
(a) What route is selected using the nearest-neighbor algorithm starting at H?
(b) What route is selected using the sorted-edges algorithm?
(c) What is the cost of each route?
16. Apply the nearest-neighbor method (starting at vertex A) and the sorted-edges method to find
(it is hoped) a cheap tour. What is the cost of each tour?

17. Apply the nearest-neighbor method (starting at Adams) and the sorted-edges method to find (it
is hoped) a cheap tour. What is the cost of each tour?
18. Use the following graph to answer the questions.

(a) What route is produced by using the nearest-neighbor algorithm to solve the
traveling salesman problem, starting at A?

(b) What is the distance of the route you found in (a)?

(c) What route is produced by using the sorted edges algorithm to solve the traveling
salesman problem?

(d) What is the distance of the route you found in (c)?

19. Find the chromatic number of the graph below.

20. For each of the graphs below find the chromatic number.

21. The owner of a new pet store wishes to display tropical fish in display tanks. The accompanying
table shows the incompatibilities between the species, in the sense that an X indicates that it is
unwise to allow those species in the row and column that meet with an X to be in the same
tank.
A B C D E F G H I
A X X X
B X X
C X X X
D X X X
E X X X
F X X X X
G X X X X X
H X X X X
I X X X

(a) Draw an appropriate graph to represent the information in the table.

(b) What is the minimum number of tanks needed to display all the fish she wishes to sell?
(c) Display the species so that the number of species in each tank is as nearly equal as possible.
22. The legislature of a city has committees devoted to the following governmental areas:
A=agriculture; P=planning; D=districting; F=finance; E=education; T=transportation; H=housing;
C=courts. To schedule meetings for these committees in as few time slots as possible, consider
the graph model below.

(a) What is the minimum number of time slots in which it is possible to schedule these
committees?

(b) If there are only three rooms with the audio and video setups needed for the committees to
meet, what is the minimum number of time slots during which the committees can meet?

23. Which of the following graphs are trees?

24. Find two different spanning trees for the graph below:

Spanning Tree 1:

Spanning Tree 2:

25. Use Kruskal’s algorithm for minimum-cost spanning trees on the graph below. What is the cost
of the tree found?
26. Use Kruskal’s algorithm for minimum-cost spanning trees on the graph below. What is the cost
of the tree found?

27. Use Kruskal’s algorithm for minimum-cost spanning trees on the graph below. What is the cost
of the tree found?

28. Make a spell-checking tree using the following dictionary:

Air, bake, cow, din, eat, fire, game, home, it, jab, kick, let, moon, now, over, pal, quit, rain, sand

How many checks are needed to test whether ``hope’’ is a valid word? How many checks are
needed to test the word ``cow’’?