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An Algorithmists Toolkit Lecture 1

This document summarizes key concepts from Lecture 1 of the class 18.409 An Algorithmist's Toolkit. It introduces linear algebra concepts like eigenvalues and eigenvectors. It then discusses different matrix representations of graphs, including adjacency matrices and Laplacian matrices. It provides examples of calculating Laplacians for simple graphs and shows how the eigenvectors of a Laplacian matrix can be used to embed graphs in 2D planes.

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Alex Yu
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© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
138 views

An Algorithmists Toolkit Lecture 1

This document summarizes key concepts from Lecture 1 of the class 18.409 An Algorithmist's Toolkit. It introduces linear algebra concepts like eigenvalues and eigenvectors. It then discusses different matrix representations of graphs, including adjacency matrices and Laplacian matrices. It provides examples of calculating Laplacians for simple graphs and shows how the eigenvectors of a Laplacian matrix can be used to embed graphs in 2D planes.

Uploaded by

Alex Yu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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18.

409 An Algorithmist’s Toolkit September 10, 2009

Lecture 1
Lecturer: Jonathan Kelner Scribe: Jesse Geneson (2009)

1 Overview
The class’s goals, requirements, and policies were introduced, and topics in the class were described. Every­
thing in the overview should be in the course syllabus, so please consult that for a complete description.

2 Linear Algebra Review


This course requires linear algebra, so here is a quick review of the facts we will use frequently.

Definition 1 Let M by an n × n matrix. Suppose that

M x = λx

for x ∈ Rn , x =
� 0, and λ ∈ R. Then we call x an eigenvector and λ an eigenvalue of M .

Proposition 2 If M is a symmetric n × n matrix, then


• If v and w are eigenvectors of M with different eigenvalues, then v and w are orthogonal (v · w = 0).

• If v and w are eigenvectors of M with the same eigenvalue, then so is q = av + bw, so eigenvectors
with the same eigenvalue need not be orthogonal.
• M has a full orthonormal basis of eigenvectors v1 , . . . , vn . All eigenvalues and eigenvectors are real.

• M is diagonalizable:
M = V ΛV T
where V is orthogonal (V V T = In ), with columns equal to v1 , �
. . . , vn , and Λ is diagonal, with the
n
corresponding eigenvalues of M as its diagonal entries. So M = i=1 λi vi viT .

In Proposition 2, it was important that M was symmetric. No results stated there are necessarily true
in the case that M is not symmetric.

Definition 3 We call the span of the eigenvectors with the same eigenvalue an eigenspace.

3 Matrices for Graphs


During this course we will study the following matrices that are naturally associated with a graph:

• The Adjacency Matrix

• The Random Walk Matrix


• The Laplacian Matrix

• The Normalized Laplacian Matrix

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Let G = (V, E) be a graph, where |V | = n and |E| = m. We will for this lecture assume that G is
unweighted, undirected, and has no multiple edges or self loops.

Definition 4 For a graph G, the adjacency matrix A = AG is the n × n matrix given by


�
1 if (i, j) ∈ E
Ai,j =
0 otherwise

For an unweighted graph G, AG is clearly symmetric.


Definition 5 Given an unweighted graph G, the Laplacian matrix L = LG is the n × n matrix given by
⎧
⎨ −1 if (i, j) ∈ E
Li,j = di if i = j
0 otherwise
⎩

where di is the degree of the ith vertex.


For unweighted G, the Laplacian matrix is clearly symmetric. An equivalent definition for the Laplacian
matrix is
LG = DG − AG ,
where DG is the diagonal matrix with ith diagonal entry equal to the degree of vi , and AG is the adjacency
matrix.

4 Example Laplacians
Consider the graph H with adjacency matrix
⎛ ⎞
0 1 0 1 0
⎜
⎜ 1 0 1 0 0 ⎟
⎟
AH = ⎜
⎜ 0 1 0 1 1 ⎟
⎟
⎝ 1 0 1 0 0 ⎠
0 0 1 0 0

This graph has Laplacian ⎛ ⎞


2 −1 0 −1 0
⎜
⎜ −1 2 −1 0 0 ⎟
⎟
LH = ⎜
⎜ 0 −1 3 −1 −1 ⎟
⎟
⎝ −1 0 −1 2 0 ⎠
0 0 −1 0 1
Now consider the graph G with adjacency matrix
⎛ ⎞
0 1 0
AG =⎝ 1 0 1 ⎠
0 1 0

This graph has Laplacian ⎛ ⎞


1 −1 0
LG = ⎝ −1 2 −1 ⎠
0 −1 1
LG is a matrix, and thus a linear transformation. We would like to understand how LG acts on a vector
v. To do this, it will help to think of a vector v ∈ R3 as a map X : V → R. We can thus write v as

1-2
⎛ ⎞
X(1)
v = ⎝ X(2) ⎠
X(3)

The action of LG on v is then


⎞ ⎛ ⎞
� X(1) − X(2)
⎛ ⎞⎛ ⎞ ⎛
1 −1 0 X(1) X(1) − X(2) �
LG v = ⎝ −1 2 −1 ⎠ ⎝ X(2) ⎠ = ⎝ 2X(2) − X(1) − X(3) ⎠ = ⎝ 2 X(2) − [ X(1)+X(3) ] ⎠
⎜ ⎟
2
0 −1 1 X(3) X(3) − X(2) X(3) − X(2)

For a general Laplacian, we will have

[LG v]i = [di ∗ (X(i) − average of X on neighbors of i)]

Remark For any G, 1 = (1, . . . , 1) is an eigenvector of LG with eigenvalue 0, since for this vector X(i)
always equals the average of its neighbors’ values.

Proposition 6 We will see later the following results about the eigenvalues λi and corresponding eigenvec­
tors vi of LG :
• Order the eigenvalues so λ1 ≤ . . . ≤ λn , with corresponding eigenvectors v1 , . . . , vn . Then v1 = 1 and
λ1 = 0. So for all i λi ≥ 0.
• One can get much information about the graph G from just the first few nontrivial eigenvectors.

5 Matlab Demonstration
As remarked before, vectors v ∈ Rn may be construed as maps Xv : V → R. Thus each eigenvector assigns a
real number to each vertex in G. A point in the plane is a pair of real numbers, so we can embed a connected
graph into the plane using (Xv2 , Xv3 ) : V → R2 . The following examples generated in Matlab show that
this embedding provides representations of some planar graphs.

Image courtesy of Dan Spielman. Used with Permission.

Figure 1: Plots of the first two nontrivial eigenvectors for a ring graph and a grid graph

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Image courtesy of Dan Spielman. Used with Permission.

Figure 2: Handmade graph embedding (left) and plot of the first two nontrivial eigenvectors (right) for an
interesting graph due to Spielman

Image courtesy of Dan Spielman. Used with Permission.


Figure 3: Handmade graph embedding (left) and plot of first two nontrivial eigenvectors (right) for a graph
used to model an airfoil

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MIT OpenCourseWare
http://ocw.mit.edu

18.409 Topics in Theoretical Computer Science: An Algorithmist's Toolkit


Fall 2009

For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use, visit: http://ocw.mit.edu/terms.

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