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Graphs and Networks in Python
Every now and then you might find a problem that needs you to think in terms of graphs or networks, at first you might grab pen an paper to draw and figure things out conceptually ( something I recommend and practice ) and after that you might want to implement or formalize your ideas in code and this is where I found myself recently, after a little searching I found networkx which ( in their words ) is a package for the creation, manipulation, and study of the structure, dynamics, and functions of complex networks.
👋 Hi there 👋 all my content is free for Medium subscribers, if you are already a subscriber I just wanted to say thank you! 🎉 If not and you are considering subscribing, you can use my membership referral link, you will be supporting this and other high quality content, Thank you! ⭐️ Subscribe to Medium! ⭐️In my case I just wanted a way to illustrate some graphs but NetworkX seems to also provide support for data structures and node/vertice content which could save me and you a lot of time, so come along for a narrated introduction based on my experience.
⚠️ Some experience with graphs is helpful, but this is mostly a beginner friendly post, if you need to review the basics check the wiki on graphs :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_(discrete_mathematics)
A simple communication network
Let's say you want to model a communication network between 2 towns with one road connecting them (the town of Kimberley and the town of Worden) and you want to know how fast news would spread from one town to another knowing that news spread from one resident to another in 1 day and that traversing the road takes 2 days.You can start by modeling in pen and paper something like this, stylized on the left, graph notation on the right don't worry about the details yet we'll get to those soon.
We’ll come back to this problem in a minute but first let’s go over some networkx basics (install instructions), the following script shows you how to make a simple graph and display it:
