Splash Biography

How do social networks like Twitter and Facebook function? Or Google Maps' route navigation? Underlying all these technologies are graphs, a useful data structure representing objects and the relationships between them. In this short "course", we'll explore graphs through hands-on coding, covering how to implement them and travel through them. As a fun application of graphs, we'll code our own version of the algorithm used by The Oracle of Bacon to find how 2 people are connected to each other through mutual friends/relationships. (You can play around with the Oracle of Bacon here: https://oracleofbacon.org). We'll also briefly touch on other problems in graph theory (like shortest path) and algorithms for solving them which build off what you will learn in this "course". Absolutely no prior knowledge of graphs is assumed. Get ready to learn about something cool and exciting! In addition, for those interested in competitive programming and/or software engineering careers, sometimes competitions and interviews have graph problems. This "course" would serve as a useful intro to graphs and point out useful algorithms in the field for further exploration.