Graph Theory:

Cliques
Ryan Nickerson
Roy Burdin
Henry Armstrong
Alex Martin
Derek Hanrahan

Basic Graph Theory Vocab.

Vertices are points of a graph. Usually used to represent something, in
our example our vertices will represent towns.
Edges are lines that connect vertices. Edges show a connection
between vertices, and in our example edges will represent roads.
A Graph is a collection of vertices and edges, in our example the graph
will represent a county.
Cliques of a graph are defined as follows: A subset S of vertices
satisfying the following properties:
S contains 3 or more vertices
Each pair of vertices in S have an edge connecting them
S is maximal (there is no larger set of vertices that satisfies the
second property and contains S)
In our project we will show how to find cliques of a graph.

Example of Cliques in a Graph

In the graph to the left you
can see that it contains 4
vertices and 4 edges
interconnecting them. We
can see that there is a
clique containing points A,
B, and C because there is a
edge between each pairing
of these points. The first
and third properties of
being a clique are usually
quite obvious to observe,
as it is with this case.

Towns in Maine
Our Problem:
There are twenty towns in a county in Maine. Below
these towns are listed in pairs if there is a road
connecting them. We want to know if there are
cliques within our graph and what towns belong to
them.
Town Connections:
AB, AM, AD, BL, BK, BE, BC, CE, DE, EJ, EL,
EK, FJ, GH, GJ, HJ, HP, IO, IR, IS, IQ, KN, KL,
LM, MR, OQ, OS, OR, PQ, PR, QR, QS, QT, RS,
ST

Using Matrices to Find Cliques

Now to detect if a graph has cliques, because that
may not be apparent as it is with our problem, you
can use an incedence matrix. To make an
incedence matrix you make an n x n matrix (n is
the number of vertices), and label your rows and
columns with your vertices. You then fill in your
entries by either putting a 1 or a 0 in, 1 if the
vertices have an edge directly connecting them or 0
if they dont.

Our Incedence Matrix

Matrix Multiplication
We now need to cube our matrix, but first well
explain matrix multiplication. To multiply two n
by n matrices you take the first row of your first
matrix and multiple its entries by the entries of the
first column of you second matrix and then add
those products together to get your 11 entry of
your product matrix. So in other words, to get the
ij-th entry of you product matrix take the i-th row
of you first matrix, multiply its entries by the
entries of the j-th column of your second matrix,
and then add all those products together.

Cubed Incedence Matrix

Do we have any Cliques?

So how do we use this cubed matrix? Well, you
look at your ii-th entries (i.e. the diagonal entries)
and if their entry is a positive number then you
know your i-th vertice belongs to a clique. This is
because our cubed incedence matrix tells us the
number of ways your i-th vertice has access to
itself, and since there are no loops in our graph
then that i-th vertice must be part of a clique.

Towns in a Clique
To the right is a list of
towns that belong to
cliques. We know they
belong to cliques because
looking back at our cubed
matrix we can see in each
towns case, where its row
intersects its column you
have a positive number.

Towns belonging to a
clique: B, C, E, G, H, I, J,
K, L, O, P, Q, R, S, T
So now that we know
what towns belong to a
clique we want to know
which towns are in cliques
together. For this task
well take a look at a
graph of our points.

Graph of our Towns

Note: This is just one possibility for how our graph looks, it could have easily
been drawn a different way as long as it has all the same points connected

Our Cliques
So after analyzing our graph and already
knowing what towns belong to cliques we
can determine that the cliques of our county
are: BCE, BEKL, GHJ, QST, PQR, and
IOQRS. All 6 of these cliques also meet all
three criterion for being a clique.

What does it all mean?

So after determining what towns are in a clique in our county, what do
we do with this information. Well, in this specific example we can say
the towns that create cliques could be seen as economic centers
(perhaps not that level in Maine, but if you generalized the idea).
Since the towns are all interconnected by roads you can easily
transport goods and services within those towns. Cliques also have a
variety of other uses, such as determining the validity of
communication lines (making sure everyone can contact everyone else
within a group). Cliques could also be used to determine degrees of
separation between people. For example, on Facebook there is an
experiment called Six Degrees of Separation whose purpose is to see if
everyone on Facebook is only six people away from one another. If it
were feasible to create a incedence matrix of everyone on Facebook
you could us cliques to determine if everyone is only separated by six
people.