What's the difference between the data structure Tree and Graph? - search

Academically speaking, what's the essential difference between the data structure Tree and Graph? And how about the tree based search and Graph based search?

A Tree is just a restricted form of a Graph.
Trees have direction (parent / child relationships) and don't contain cycles.
They fit with in the category of Directed Acyclic Graphs (or a DAG).
So Trees are DAGs with the restriction that a child can only have one parent.
One thing that is important to point out, Trees aren't a recursive data structure.
They can not be implemented as a recursive data structure because of the above restrictions. But any DAG implementation, which are generally not recursive, can also be used.
My preferred Tree implementation is a centralized map representation and is non recursive.
Graphs are generally searched breadth first or depth first. The same applies to Tree.

Instead of explaining I prefer to show it in pictures.
A tree in real time
A graph in real life use
Yes a map can be visualised as a graph data structure.
Seeing them like this makes life easier. Trees are used at places where we know that each node has only one parent. But graphs can have multiple predecessors(term parent is generally not used for graphs).
In real world, you can represent almost anything using graphs. I used a map, for example. If you consider each city as a node, it can be reached from multiple points. The points which lead to this node are called predecessors and the points which this node will lead to are called successors.
electrical circuit diagram, the plan of a house, computer network or a river system are few more examples of graphs. Many real world examples can be considered as graphs.
Technical diagram could be like this
Tree :
Graph :
Make sure to refer to below links. Those will answer almost all your questions on trees and graphs.
References :
http://www.introprogramming.info/english-intro-csharp-book/read-online/chapter-17-trees-and-graphs/#_Toc362296541
http://www.community-of-knowledge.de/beitrag/data-trees-as-a-means-of-presenting-complex-data-analysis/
Wikipedia

The other answers are useful, but they're missing the properties of each:
Graph
Undirected graph, image source: Wikipedia
Directed graph, image source: Wikipedia
Consists of a set of vertices (or nodes) and a set of edges connecting some or all of them
Any edge can connect any two vertices that aren't already connected by an identical edge (in the same direction, in the case of a directed graph)
Doesn't have to be connected (the edges don't have to connect all vertices together): a single graph can consist of a few disconnected sets of vertices
Could be directed or undirected (which would apply to all edges in the graph)
As per Wikipedia:
For example, if the vertices represent people at a party, and there is an edge between two people if they shake hands, then this graph is undirected because any person A can shake hands with a person B only if B also shakes hands with A. In contrast, if any edge from a person A to a person B corresponds to A admiring B, then this graph is directed, because admiration is not necessarily reciprocated.
Tree
Image source: Wikipedia
A type of graph
Vertices are more commonly called "nodes"
Edges are directed and represent an "is child of" (or "is parent of") relationship
Each node (except the root node) has exactly one parent (and zero or more children)
Has exactly one "root" node (if the tree has at least one node), which is a node without a parent
Has to be connected
Is acyclic, meaning it has no cycles: "a cycle is a path [AKA sequence] of edges and vertices wherein a vertex is reachable from itself"
There is some overlap in the above properties. Specifically, the last two properties are implied by the rest of the properties. But all of them are worth noting nonetheless.

TREE :
1. Only one path exist between two vertices (Nodes).
2. Root node is the starting node of the tree.
3. Tree doesn't have loops.
4. Number of edges: n-1 (where n is number of nodes)
5. Tree looks like Hierarchical
6. All trees are graph.
GRAPH :
1. More than one path is allowed between two vertices.
2. There is no root node concept (we can start from any node).
3. There can be loop in graph.
4. Number of edges are not defined.
5. Graph looks like Network.
6. All graphs are not tree.
More detailed explanation you can find in this video -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVHrjVTp9_w

Tree is special form of graph i.e. minimally connected graph and having only one path between any two vertices.
In graph there can be more than one path i.e. graph can have uni-directional or bi-directional paths (edges) between nodes
Also you can see more details:
http://freefeast.info/difference-between/difference-between-trees-and-graphs-trees-vs-graphs/

Tree is basically undirected graph which not contain cycle,so we can say that tree is more restricted form of graph.
However tree and graph have different application to implement various algorithm in programming.
For example graph can be used for model road map and tree can be used for implement any hierarchical data structure.

Simple concept is Tree doesn't have cycle formation and its unidirectional whereas Graph forms cycle and it will be Bidirectional in some cases and Unidirectional in another.

A tree is a digraph such that:
a) with edge directions removed, it is connected and acyclic
You can remove either the assumption that it is acyclic
If it is finite, you can alternatively remove the assumption that it is connected
b) every vertex but one, the root, has indegree 1
c) the root has indegree 0
If there are only finitely many nodes, you can remove either the assumption that the root has indegree 0 or the assumption that the
nodes other than the root have degree 1
Reference: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs2800/2016sp/lectures/lec27-29-graphtheory.pdf

Trees are obvious: they're recursive data structures consisting of nodes with children.
Map (aka dictionary) are key/value pairs. Give a map a key and it will return the associated value.
Maps can be implemented using trees, I hope you don't find that confusing.
UPDATE: Confusing "graph" for "map" is very confusing.
Graphs are more complex than trees. Trees imply recursive parent/child relationships. There are natural ways to traverse a tree: depth-first, breadth-first, level-order, etc.
Graphs can have uni-directional or bi-directional paths between nodes, be cyclic or acyclic, etc. I would consider graphs to be more complex.
I think a cursory search in any decent data structures text (e.g. "Algorithms Design Manual") would give more and better information than any number of SO answers. I would recommend that you not take the passive route and start doing some research for yourself.

one root node in tree and only one parent for one child. However, there is no concept of root node. Another difference is, tree is hierarchical model but graph is network model.

In tree, each node (except the root node) has exactly one predecessor node and one or two successor nodes. It can be traversed by using In-order, Pre-order, Post-order, and Breadth First traversals​. Tree is a special kind of graph that has no cycle so that is known as DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph). Tree is a hierarchical model.
In graph, each node has one or more predecessor nodes and successor nodes. The graph is traversed by using Depth First Search (DFS) and Breadth First Search (BFS) algorithms. Graph has cycle so it is more complex than tree. Graph is a network model. There are two kinds of graph: directed graphs and undirected graphs.

In mathematics, a graph is a representation of a set of objects where some pairs of the objects are connected by links. The interconnected objects are represented by mathematical abstractions called vertices, and the links that connect some pairs of vertices are called edges.[1] Typically, a graph is depicted in diagrammatic form as a set of dots for the vertices, joined by lines or curves for the edges. Graphs are one of the objects of study in discrete mathematics.

Related

Is there a way to have the same pattern across all the faces of an icosahedron?

This is the scenario: I have an icosahedron, therefore I have 12 vertices and 20 faces.
From the point of view of each vertex he is the center of an "extruded" pentagon, whose triangles are the faces of the icosahedron.
Let's say we want to name each of the vertices of each of these triangles from 1 to 3, always in a counterclockwise fashion, imagining that each vertex is not shared among different triangles.
(can't upload the image here for some reason sorry)
https://ibb.co/FmYfRG4
Is there a way to arrange the naming of the vertices inside each triangle so that every pentagon yields the same pattern of numbers along the five triangles?
As you can see by arranging the vertex names that way there would be the first pentagon with 1,1,1,1,1 but around it other pentagons couldn't have the same pattern.
EDIT: following Andrew Morton's comment I tried to write a possible sequence
I came up with two sequences of triangles: 1,2,3,1,3 for most pentagons, and 2,2,2,2,2 for the two caps.
I wonder if there is some additional optimization so that I only have one sequence instead of two, or maybe if there's is some mathematical demonstration that makes this impossible.

Consistent normal calculation of a point cloud

Is there a library in python or c++ that is capable of estimating normals of point clouds in a consistent way?
In a consistent way I mean that the orientation of the normals is globally preserved over the surface.
For example, when I use python open3d package:
downpcd.estimate_normals(search_param=o3d.geometry.KDTreeSearchParamHybrid(
radius=4, max_nn=300))
I get an inconsistent results, where some of the normals point inside while the rest point outside.
many thanks
UPDATE: GOOD NEWS!
The tangent plane algorithm is now implemented in Open3D!
The source code and the documentation.
You can just call pcd.orient_normals_consistent_tangent_plane(k=15).
And k is the knn graph parameter.
Original answer:
Like Mark said, if your point cloud comes from multiple depth images, then you can call open3d.geometry.orient_normals_towards_camera_location(pcd, camera_loc) before concatenating them together (assuming you're using python version of Open3D).
However, if you don't have that information, you can use the tangent plane algorithm:
Build knn-graph for your point cloud.
The graph nodes are the points. Two points are connected if one is the other's k-nearest-neighbor.
Assign weights to the edges in the graph.
The weight associated with edge (i, j) is computed as 1 - |ni â‹… nj|
Generate the minimal spanning tree of the resulting graph.
Rooting the tree at an initial node,
traverse the tree in depth-first order, assigning each node an
orientation that is consistent with that of its parent.
Actually the above algorithm comes from Section 3.3 of Hoppe's 1992
SIGGRAPH paper Surface Reconstruction from Unorganized Points. The algorithm is also open sourced.
AFAIK the algorithm does not guarantee a perfect orientation, but it should be good enough.
If you know the viewpoint from where each point was captured, it can be used to orient the normals.
I assume that this not the case - so given your situation, which seems rather watertight and uniformly sampled, mesh reconstruction is promising.
PCL library offers many alternatives in the surface module. For the sake of normal estimation, I would start with either:
ConcaveHull
Greedy projection triangulation
Although simple, they should be enough to produce a single coherent mesh.
Once you have a mesh, each triangle defines a normal (the cross product). It is important to note that a mesh isn't just a collection of independent faces. The faces are connected and this connectivity enforces a coherent orientation across the mesh.
pcl::PolygonMesh is an "half edge data structure". This means that every triangle face is defined by an ordered set of vertices, which defines the orientation:
order of vertices => order of cross product => well defined unambiguous normals
You can either use the normals from the mesh (nearest neighbor), or calculate a low resolution mesh and just use it to orient the cloud.

How to collect all chains by using python3

Background:
I'm doing polymer simulation. And I'm trying to use networkx to calculate how many chains in the system. Molecules inside systems are equal to the nodes and bonds equal to the connection between nodes.
What I have tried:
I used networkx.chain_decompostion to calculate the number of the chain.
import networkx as nx
info = nx.chain_decomposition(G)
Issues:
I found it only find the chains which are closed loop, such as A1-A2-A3-A1.
However, there are still many chains are not closed, such as A1-A2-A3.
Is there an easy way to collect both types of the chains. Thanks!
The function chain_decomposition is not what you think it is. From the docs:
The chain decomposition of a graph with respect a depth-first search tree is a set of cycles or paths derived from the set of fundamental cycles of the tree [...]
What you are probably looking for is the function number_connected_components.
See this link for details. This assumes that each connected component is a chain, i.e. that there are several disjoint subgraphs in your graph G, each corresponding to a (non-branching) polymer molecule. If that is not the case (the polymer is branched) then I you need to do something a bit more clever. For example, you could compute all shortest paths between leave nodes (atoms with a single bond).
You can find the leaf nodes by inspecting the degree of the nodes with list(G.degree) (leaves have degree 1), and then compute the shortest paths with between all leaf pairs with all_shortest_paths.
To find cyclic molecules you can use chain_decomposition as before.

Binary space partition tree for 3D map

I have a project which takes a picture of topographic map and makes it a 3D object.
When I draw the 3D rectangles of the object, it works very slowly. I read about BSP trees and I didn't really understand it. Can someone please explain how to use BSP in 3D (maybe give an example)? and how to use it in my case, when some mountains in the map cover other parts so I need to organize the rectangles in order to draw them well?
In n-D a BSP tree is a spatial partitioning data structure that recursively splits the space into cells using splitting n-D hyperplanes (or even n-D hypersurfaces).
In 2D, the whole space is recursively split with 2D lines (into (possibly infinite) convex polygons).
In 3D, the whole space is recursively split with 3D planes (into (possibly infinite) convex polytopes).
How to build a BSP tree in 3D (from a model)
The model is made of a list of primitives (triangles or quads which is I believe what you call rectangles).
Start with an initial root node in the BSP tree that represents a cell covering the whole 3D space and initially holding all the primitives of your model.
Compute an optimal splitting plane for the considered primitives.
The goal of this step is to find a plane that will split the primitives into two groups of primitives of approximately the same size (either the same spatial extents or the same count of primitives).
A simple splitting strategy could be to chose a direction at random (which will be the normal of your plane) for the splitting. Then sort all the primitives spatially along this axis. And traverse the sorted list of primitives to find the position that will split the primitives into two groups of roughly equal size (i.e. this simply finds the median position from the primitives along this axis). With this direction and this position, the splitting plane is defined.
One typically used splitting strategy is however:
Compute the centroid of all the considered primitives.
Compute the covariance matrix of all the considered primitives.
The centroid gives the position of the splitting plane.
The eigenvector for the largest eigenvalue of the covariance matrix gives the normal of the splitting plane, which is the direction where the primitives are the most spread (and where the current cell should be split).
Split the current node, create two child nodes and assign primitives to each of them or to the current node.
Having found a suitable splitting plane in 1., the 3D space can be now be divided into two half-spaces: one positive, pointed to by the plane normal, and one negative (on the other side of the splitting plane). The goal of this step is to cut in half the considered primitives by assigning the primitives to the half-space where they belong.
Test each primitive of the current node against the splitting plane and assign it to either the left or right child node depending on whether it in the positive half-space or in the negative half-space.
Some primitives may intersect the splitting plane. They can be clipped by the plane into smaller primitives (and maybe also triangulated) so that these smaller primitives are fully inside one of the half-spaces and only belong to one of the cells corresponding to the child nodes. Another option is to simply attach the overlapping primitives to the current node.
Apply recursively this splitting strategy to the created child nodes (and their respective child nodes), until some criterion to stop splitting is met (typically not having enough primitives in the current node).
How to use a BSP tree in 3D
In all use cases, the hierarchical structure of the BSP tree is used to discard irrelevant part of the model for the query.
Locating a point
Traverse the BSP tree with your query point. At each node, go left or right depending on where the query point is located w.r.t. to the splitting plane of the node.
Compute a ray / model intersection
To find all the triangles of your model intersecting a ray (you may need this for picking your map), do something similar to 1.. Traverse the BSP tree with your query ray. At each node, compute the intersection of the ray with the splitting plane. Also check the primitives stored at the node (if any) and report the ones that intersect the ray. Continue traversing the children of this node that whose cell intersect your ray.
Discarding invisible data
Another possible use is to discard pieces of your model that lie outside the view frustum of your camera (that's probably what you are interested in here). The view frustum is exactly bounded by six planes and has 6 quad faces. Like in 1. and 2., you can traverse the BSP tree, check recursively which cell overlaps with the view frustum and completely discard the ones (and the corresponding pieces of your model) that don't. For the plane / view frustum intersection test, you could check whether any of the 6 quads of the view frustum intersect the plane, or you could conservatively approximate the view frustum with a bounding volume (sphere / axis-aligned bounding box / oriented bounding box) or even do a combination of both.
That being said, the solution to your slow rendering problem might be elsewhere (you may not be able to discard a lot of data with a 3D BSP tree for your model):
62K squares is not that big: if you're using OpenGL, you should however not draw these squares individually or continously stream the geometry to the GPU. You can put all the vertices in a single static vertex buffer and draw the quads by preparing a static index buffer containing the list of indices for the squares with either triangles or (better) triangle strips primitives to draw the corresponding squares in a single draw call.
Your data is highly structured (a regular grid with elevation). If you happen to have much larger data sets (that don't even fit in memory anymore), then you need not only spatial partitioning (that exploits the 2.5D structure of your data and its regularity, like a quadtree) but perhaps LOD techniques as well (to replace pieces of your data by a cheaper representation instead of simply discarding the data). You should then investigate LOD techniques for terrain rendering. This page lists a few resources (papers + implementations). A simplified Chunked LOD could be used as a starting point.

polygons from BSP

I have a 3d volume given by a binary space partition tree. Usually these are made from polygon models, and the splitted polygons already stored inside the tree nodes.
But mine is not, so I have no polygons. Every node has nothing but it's cut plane (given by normal and origin distance for example). Thus the tree still represent a solid 3d volume, defined by all the cuts made. However, for visualisation I need a polygonal mesh of this volume. How can that be reconstructed efficiently?
The crude method would be to convert the infinite half spaces of the leaves to large enough polhedrons (eg. cubes) and push every single one of them upwards the tree, cutting it by every node's plane it passes. That seems extremely costly, as the tree may be unbalanced (eg. if stupidly made from a convex polyhedra). Is there any classic solution?
In order to recover the polygonal surface you need to intersect the planes. Where each vertex of a polygon is generated by an intersection of three planes and each edge by an intersection of 2 planes. But making this efficient and numerical stable is no trivial task. So i propose to use qhalf that is part of qhull. A documentation of the input and ouput of qhalf can be found here. Of course you can use qhull (and the functionality from qhalf) as a library.

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