Transitive reduction

siiky

2023/03/04

2023/03/04

2023/05/12

programming,algorithms

A transitive reduction algorithm is an algorithm that given a graph computes another (possibly smaller) graph with no redundant edges (assuming transitivity). For example, if we have the following graph:

a -> { b, c }
b -> { c }

We can reduce it to the following representation by assuming transitivity:

a -> { b }
b -> { c }

This operation is basically the opposite of what's done in Disjoint sets (Scheme ยง disjoint-set). With Disjoint sets, for performance reasons, we conflate elements of the same subset as much as possible.