Graph drawing is an area of mathematics and computer science combining methods from geometric graph theory and information visualization to derive two-dimensional depictions of graphs arising from applications such as social network analysis, cartography, and bioinformatics.
A drawing of a graph or network diagram is a pictorial representation of the vertices and edges of a graph. This drawing should not be confused with the graph itself: very different layouts can correspond to the same graph. In the abstract, all that matters is which pairs vertices are connected by edges. In the concrete, however, the arrangement of these vertices and edges within a drawing affects its understandability, usability, fabrication cost, and aesthetics. The problem gets worse, if the graph changes over time by adding and deleting edges (dynamic graph drawing) and the goal is to preserve the user's mental map.
Read more about Graph Drawing: Graphical Conventions, Quality Measures, Layout Methods, Application-specific Graph Drawings, Software
Famous quotes containing the words graph and/or drawing:
“When producers want to know what the public wants, they graph it as curves. When they want to tell the public what to get, they say it in curves.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“The UN is not just a product of do-gooders. It is harshly real. The day will come when men will see the UN and what it means clearly. Everything will be all right—you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction, and see it as a drawing they made themselves.”
—Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961)