# 6.1: Representing a Graph by a Matrix


An adjacency matrix is a way of representing an $$\mathtt{n}$$ vertex graph $$G=(V,E)$$ by an $$\mathtt{n}\times\mathtt{n}$$ matrix, $$\mathtt{a}$$, whose entries are boolean values.

    int n;
boolean[][] a;
n = n0;
a = new boolean[n][n];
}


The matrix entry $$\mathtt{a[i][j]}$$ is defined as

$\mathtt{a[i][j]}= \begin{cases} \mathtt{true} & \text{if } \mathtt{(i,j)}\in E \\ \mathtt{false} & \text{otherwise} \end{cases}\nonumber$

The adjacency matrix for the graph in Figure 6.1 is shown in Figure $$\PageIndex{1}$$.

In this representation, the operations $$\mathtt{addEdge(i,j)}$$, $$\mathtt{removeEdge(i,j)}$$, and $$\mathtt{hasEdge(i,j)}$$ just involve setting or reading the matrix entry $$\mathtt{a[i][j]}$$:

    void addEdge(int i, int j) {
a[i][j] = true;
}
void removeEdge(int i, int j) {
a[i][j] = false;
}
boolean hasEdge(int i, int j) {
return a[i][j];
}


These operations clearly take constant time per operation.

Where the adjacency matrix performs poorly is with the $$\mathtt{outEdges(i)}$$ and $$\mathtt{inEdges(i)}$$ operations. To implement these, we must scan all $$\mathtt{n}$$ entries in the corresponding row or column of $$\mathtt{a}$$ and gather up all the indices, $$\mathtt{j}$$, where $$\mathtt{a[i][j]}$$, respectively $$\mathtt{a[j][i]}$$, is true.

    List<Integer> outEdges(int i) {
List<Integer> edges = new ArrayList<Integer>();
for (int j = 0; j < n; j++)
return edges;
}
List<Integer> inEdges(int i) {
List<Integer> edges = new ArrayList<Integer>();
for (int j = 0; j < n; j++)
return edges;
}


These operations clearly take $$O(\mathtt{n})$$ time per operation.

Another drawback of the adjacency matrix representation is that it is large. It stores an $$\mathtt{n}\times \mathtt{n}$$ boolean matrix, so it requires at least $$\mathtt{n}^2$$ bits of memory. The implementation here uses a matrix of $$\mathtt{boolean}$$ values so it actually uses on the order of $$\mathtt{n}^2$$ bytes of memory. A more careful implementation, which packs $$\mathtt{w}$$ boolean values into each word of memory, could reduce this space usage to $$O(\mathtt{n}^2/\mathtt{w})$$ words of memory.

Theorem $$\PageIndex{1}$$

The AdjacencyMatrix data structure implements the Graph interface. An AdjacencyMatrix supports the operations

• $$\mathtt{addEdge(i,j)}$$, $$\mathtt{removeEdge(i,j)}$$, and $$\mathtt{hasEdge(i,j)}$$ in constant time per operation; and
• $$\mathtt{inEdges(i)}$$, and $$\mathtt{outEdges(i)}$$ in $$O(\mathtt{n})$$ time per operation.

The space used by an AdjacencyMatrix is $$O(\mathtt{n}^2)$$.

Despite its high memory requirements and poor performance of the $$\mathtt{inEdges(i)}$$ and $$\mathtt{outEdges(i)}$$ operations, an AdjacencyMatrix can still be useful for some applications. In particular, when the graph $$G$$ is dense, i.e., it has close to $$\mathtt{n}^2$$ edges, then a memory usage of $$\mathtt{n}^2$$ may be acceptable.

The AdjacencyMatrix data structure is also commonly used because algebraic operations on the matrix $$\mathtt{a}$$ can be used to efficiently compute properties of the graph $$G$$. This is a topic for a course on algorithms, but we point out one such property here: If we treat the entries of $$\mathtt{a}$$ as integers (1 for $$\mathtt{true}$$ and 0 for $$\mathtt{false}$$) and multiply $$\mathtt{a}$$ by itself using matrix multiplication then we get the matrix $$\mathtt{a}^2$$. Recall, from the definition of matrix multiplication, that

$\mathtt{a^2[i][j]} = \sum_{k=0}^{\mathtt{n}-1} \mathtt{a[i][k]}\cdot \mathtt{a[k][j]} \enspace .\nonumber$

Interpreting this sum in terms of the graph $$G$$, this formula counts the number of vertices, $$\mathtt{k}$$, such that $$G$$ contains both edges $$\mathtt{(i,k)}$$ and $$\mathtt{(k,j)}$$. That is, it counts the number of paths from $$\mathtt{i}$$ to $$\mathtt{j}$$ (through intermediate vertices, $$\mathtt{k}$$) whose length is exactly two. This observation is the foundation of an algorithm that computes the shortest paths between all pairs of vertices in $$G$$ using only $$O(\log \mathtt{n})$$ matrix multiplications.

6.1: Representing a Graph by a Matrix is shared under a CC BY license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.