Ear decomposition
Partition of graph into sequence of paths / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Ear decomposition?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
In graph theory, an ear of an undirected graph G is a path P where the two endpoints of the path may coincide, but where otherwise no repetition of edges or vertices is allowed, so every internal vertex of P has degree two in G. An ear decomposition of an undirected graph G is a partition of its set of edges into a sequence of ears, such that the one or two endpoints of each ear belong to earlier ears in the sequence and such that the internal vertices of each ear do not belong to any earlier ear. Additionally, in most cases the first ear in the sequence must be a cycle. An open ear decomposition or a proper ear decomposition is an ear decomposition in which the two endpoints of each ear after the first are distinct from each other.
Ear decompositions may be used to characterize several important graph classes, and as part of efficient graph algorithms. They may also be generalized from graphs to matroids.