Cayley Tree

A tree in which each non-leaf graph vertex has a constant number of branches Cayley trees are path graphs. The unique -Cayley tree on

is called an

-Cayley tree. 2-

nodes is the star graph. The illustration above

shows the first few 3-Cayley trees (also called trivalent trees, binary trees, or boron trees). The numbers of binary trees on , 2, ... nodes (i.e., -node trees having vertex degree either 1 or 3; also called 3-Cayley trees, 3-

valent trees, or boron trees) are 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0 ,4, 0, 6, 0, 11, ... (Sloane's A052120).

The illustrations above show the first few 4-Cayley and 5-Cayley trees.

The percolation threshold for a Cayley tree having

branches is

SEE ALSO: Cayley Graph, Path Graph, Star Graph, Tree

Tree

A tree is a mathematical structure that can be viewed as either a graph or as a data structure. The two views are equivalent, since a tree data structure contains not only a set of elements, but also connections between elements, giving a tree graph.

Trees were first studied by Cayley (1857). McKay maintains a database of trees up to 18 vertices, and Royle maintains one up to 20 vertices.

A tree is a set of straight line segments connected at their ends containing no closed loops (cycles). In other words, it is a simple, undirected, connected, acyclic graph (or, equivalently, a connected forest). A tree with nodes has graph edges. Conversely, a connected graph with nodes and edges is a tree. All trees

are bipartite graphs (Skiena 1990, p. 213). Trees with no particular node singled out are sometimes called free trees (or unrooted tree), by way of distinguishing them from rooted trees (Skiena 1990, Knuth 1997).

The points of connection are known as forks and the segments as branches. Final segments and the nodes at their ends are called tree leaves. A tree with two branches at each fork and with one or two tree leaves at the end of each branch is called a binary tree. A graph can be testing in Mathematica to see if it is a tree using TreeGraphQ[g] or using TreeQ[g] in the Mathematica package Combinatorica`.

Trees find applications in many diverse fields, including computer science, the enumeration of saturated hydrocarbons, the study of electrical circuits, etc. (Harary 1994, p. 4).

A tree

has either one node that is a graph center, in which case it is called a central tree, or two adjacent

nodes that are graph centers, in which case it is called a bicentral tree (Harary 1994, p. 35).

When a special node is designated to turn a tree into a rooted tree, it is called the root (or sometimes "Eve"). In such a tree, each of the nodes that is one graph edge further away from a given node is called a child, and nodes connected to the same node that are the same distance from the root node are called siblings.

Note that two branches placed end-to-end are equivalent to a single branch, which means for example, that there is only one tree of order 3. The number of nonisomorphic trees of order , 2, ... (where trees of orders

1, 2, ..., 6 are illustrated above), are 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 6, 11, 23, 47, 106, 235, 551, 1301, 3159, ... (Sloane's A000055).

The generating functions for the number of rooted trees

(1)

(2)

is related to the generating function for the number of unrooted trees

by

(3) (4)

Otter showed that

(5)

(Otter 1948, Harary and Palmer 1973, Knuth 1997), where

and

are two constants.

is given by

(6) (7)

(Sloane's A051491; Odlyzko 1995; Knuth 1997, p. 396, where Knuth writes of ) and also as the uniquepositive root of

instead

(8)

The constant

is given by

(9) (10)

(Sloane's A086308; Knuth 1997, p. 396).

If

is the number of nonisomorphic trees on

nodes, then an asymptotic series for

is given by

(11 )

where the constants can be computed in terms of partial derivatives of the function

(12)

(Plotkin and Rosenthal 1994; Finch 2003).

SEE ALSO: B-Tree, Banana Tree, Barnsley's Tree, Bicentral Tree, Binary Tree, Caterpillar, Cayley

Tree, Centered Tree, Child, Dijkstra Tree, Eve,Extended Binary Tree, Forest, Free Tree, Kruskal's Algorithm, Kruskal's Tree Theorem, Labeled Tree, Lobster, Mandelbrot Tree, Matrix Tree Theorem, OrchardPlanting Problem, Ordered Tree, Otter's Theorem, Path Graph, Planted Planar Tree, Plya Enumeration Theorem, Polynema,Pythagoras Tree, Quadtree, Ramus Tree, Red-Black Tree, Root Node, Rooted Tree, SeriesReduced Tree, Sibling, Spanning Tree, Star Graph,Steiner Tree, Stern-Brocot Tree, Tree Decomposition, Tree Leaf, Tree Searching, Weakly Binary Tree, Weighted Tree

REFERENCES:

Finch, S. R. "Otter's Tree Enumeration Constants." 5.6 in Mathematical Constants. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, pp. 295-316, 2003.

Bergeron, F.; Leroux, P.; and Labelle, G. Combinatorial Species and Tree-Like Structures. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, p. 284, 1998.

Cayley, A. "On the Theory of Analytic Forms Called Trees." Philos. Mag. 13, 19-30, 1857. Reprinted in Mathematical Papers, Vol. 3. Cambridge: pp. 242-246, 1891.

Chauvin, B.; Cohen, S.; and Rouault, A. (Eds.). Trees: Workshop in Versailles, June 14-16, 1995. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhuser, 1996.

Finch, S. "Two Asymptotic Series." December 10, 2003. http://algo.inria.fr/bsolve/.

Gardner, M. "Trees." Ch. 17 in Mathematical Magic Show: More Puzzles, Games, Diversions, Illusions and Other Mathematical Sleightof-Mind from Scientific American.New York: Vintage, pp. 240-250, 1978.

Graham, R. L.; Knuth, D. E.; and Patashnik, O. Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science, 2nd ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994.

Harary, F. "Trees." Ch. 4 in Graph Theory. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, pp. 32-42, 187-194, and 231-234, 1994.

Harary, F. and Manvel, B. "Trees." Scripta Math. 28, 327-333, 1970.

Harary, F. and Palmer, E. M. "Trees." Ch. 3 in Graphical Enumeration. New York: Academic Press, pp. 51-80, 1973.

Knuth, D. E. The Art of Computer Programming, Vol. 1: Fundamental Algorithms, 3rd ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997.

Knig, D. Theorie der endlichen und unendlichen Graphen. New York: Chelsea, p. 48, 1950.

McKay, B. D. "Trees Sorted by Diameter." http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/data/trees.html.

Nijenhuis, A. and Wilf, H. Combinatorial Algorithms for Computers and Calculators, 2nd ed. New York: Academic Press, 1978.

Odlyzko, A. M. "Asymptotic Enumeration Methods." In Handbook of Combinatorics, Vol. 2 (Ed. R. L. Graham, M. Grtschel, and L. Lovsz). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 1063-1229, 1995. http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/asymptotic.enum.pdf.

Otter, R. "The Number of Trees." Ann. Math. 49, 583-599, 1948.

Plotkin, J. M. and Rosenthal, J. W. "How to Obtain an Asymptotic Expansion of a Sequence from an Analytic Identity Satisfied by Its Generating Function." J. Austral. Math. Soc. Ser. A 56, 131-143, 1994.

Royle, G. "Trees On Up to 16 [sic] Vertices." http://mapleta.maths.uwa.edu.au/~gordon/remote/graphs/#trees.

Skiena, S. "Trees." Implementing Discrete Mathematics: Combinatorics and Graph Theory with Mathematica. Reading, MA: AddisonWesley, pp. 107 and 151-153, 1990.

Sloane, N. J. A. Sequences A000055/M0791, A051491, and A086308 in "The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences."

Sloane, N. J. A. and Plouffe, S. Figure M0791 in The Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. San Diego: Academic Press, 1995.

Wilf, H. S. Combinatorial Algorithms: An Update. Philadelphia, PA: SIAM, 1989.

CITE THIS AS:

Weisstein, Eric W. "Tree." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Tree.html

Path Graph

The path

is a tree with two nodes of vertex degree 1, and the other

nodes of vertex degree 2. A path

graph is a graph that can be drawn so that all of its vertices and edges lie on a single straight line (Gross and Yellen 2006, p. 18). is implemented in Mathematica as PathGraph[Range[n]] or Path[n] in

The path graph of length

the Mathematica package Combinatorica` , and precomputed properties of path graphs are available as GraphData[ "Path", n ]. (Note however that Mathematica Version 8 believes that cycle graphs are path graph, a convention which seems somewhat nonstandard.)

The path graph graph .

is known as the singleton graph and is equivalent to the complete graph

and the star

Path graphs

are always graceful for

The path graph polynomial given by

has chromatic polynomial, independence polynomial, matching polynomial, and reliability

(1) (2) (3) (4)

where

. These have recurrence equations

(5) (6) (7) (8)

The line graph of

is isomorphic to

is the Cayley graph of the permutations

2, 1

and

1, 3, 2

Star Graph

The star graph

of order

, sometimes simply known as an " -star" (Harary 1994, pp. 17-18; Pemmaraju and nodes with one node having vertex degree is therefore isomorphic to the complete bipartite and the

Skiena 2003, p. 248; Tutte 2005, p. 23), is a tree on other graph having vertex degree 1. The star graph (Skiena 1990, p. 146).

Note that there are two conventions for the indexing for star graphs, with some authors (e.g., Gallian 2007), adopting the convention that denotes the star graph on nodes.

is isomorphic to "the" claw graph. A star graph is sometimes termed a "claw" (Hoffman 1960) or a "cherry" (Erds and Rnyi 1963; Harary 1994, p. 17). Star graphs are always graceful. Star graphs can be constructed using Star[n] in

the Mathematica package Combinatorica` . Precomputed properties of star graphs are available via GraphData[ "Star", n ]. The chromatic polynomial of is given by

and the chromatic number is 1 for The line graph of the star graph Note that

, and is the complete graph

otherwise. . -star graph (Akers et al. 1987) and their

-stars should not be confused with the "permutation"

generalizations known as information processing. Top of Form

-star graphs (Chiang and Chen 1995) encountered in computer science and

SEE ALSO: Banana Tree, Cayley Tree, Claw Graph, Firecracker Graph, Nauru Graph, Permutation Star Graph, Shuffle-Exchange Graph, Tree Bottom of Form

REFERENCES: Akers, S.; Harel, D.; and Krishnamurthy, B. "The Star Graph: An Attractive Alternative to the International Conference of Parallel Processing, pp. 393-400, 1987. Chiang, W.-K. and Chen, R.-J. "The 259-264, 1995. Erds, P. and Rnyi, A. "Asymmetric Graphs." Acta Math. Acad. Sci. Hungar. 14, 295-315, 1963. Gallian, J. "Dynamic Survey of Graph Labeling." Elec. J. Combin. 14, No. DS6, Jan. 3, 2007. http://www.combinatorics.org/Surveys/. Harary, F. Graph Theory. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994. Hoffman, A. J. "On the Uniqueness of the Triangular Association Scheme." Ann. Math. Stat. 31, 492-497, 1960. Pemmaraju, S. and Skiena, S. "Cycles, Stars, and Wheels." 6.2.4 in Computational Discrete Mathematics: Combinatorics and Graph Theory in Mathematica.Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, pp. 248249, 2003. Skiena, S. "Cycles, Stars, and Wheels." 4.2.3 in Implementing Discrete Mathematics: Combinatorics and Graph Theory with Mathematica. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, pp. 83 and 144-147, 1990. Tutte, W. T. Graph Theory. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2005. -Star Graph: A Generalized Star Graph." Information Proc. Lett. 56, -Cube." In Proc.

Star Graph

The star graph

of order

, sometimes simply known as an " -star" (Harary 1994, pp. 17-18; Pemmaraju and nodes with one node having vertex degree is therefore isomorphic to the complete bipartite and the

Skiena 2003, p. 248; Tutte 2005, p. 23), is a tree on other graph having vertex degree 1. The star graph (Skiena 1990, p. 146).

Note that there are two conventions for the indexing for star graphs, with some authors (e.g., Gallian 2007), adopting the convention that denotes the star graph on nodes.

is isomorphic to "the" claw graph. A star graph is sometimes termed a "claw" (Hoffman 1960) or a "cherry" (Erds and Rnyi 1963; Harary 1994, p. 17). Star graphs are always graceful. Star graphs can be constructed using Star[n] in

the Mathematica package Combinatorica` . Precomputed properties of star graphs are available via GraphData[ "Star", n ]. The chromatic polynomial of is given by

and the chromatic number is 1 for The line graph of the star graph Note that

, and is the complete graph

otherwise. . -star graph (Akers et al. 1987) and their

-stars should not be confused with the "permutation"

generalizations known as information processing. Top of Form

-star graphs (Chiang and Chen 1995) encountered in computer science and

SEE ALSO: Banana Tree, Cayley Tree, Claw Graph, Firecracker Graph, Nauru Graph, Permutation Star Graph, Shuffle-Exchange Graph, Tree Bottom of Form

REFERENCES: Akers, S.; Harel, D.; and Krishnamurthy, B. "The Star Graph: An Attractive Alternative to the International Conference of Parallel Processing, pp. 393-400, 1987. Chiang, W.-K. and Chen, R.-J. "The -Star Graph: A Generalized Star Graph." Information Proc. Lett. 56, -Cube." In Proc.

259-264, 1995. Erds, P. and Rnyi, A. "Asymmetric Graphs." Acta Math. Acad. Sci. Hungar. 14, 295-315, 1963. Gallian, J. "Dynamic Survey of Graph Labeling." Elec. J. Combin. 14, No. DS6, Jan. 3, 2007. http://www.combinatorics.org/Surveys/. Harary, F. Graph Theory. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994. Hoffman, A. J. "On the Uniqueness of the Triangular Association Scheme." Ann. Math. Stat. 31, 492-497, 1960. Pemmaraju, S. and Skiena, S. "Cycles, Stars, and Wheels." 6.2.4 in Computational Discrete Mathematics: Combinatorics and Graph Theory in Mathematica.Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, pp. 248249, 2003. Skiena, S. "Cycles, Stars, and Wheels." 4.2.3 in Implementing Discrete Mathematics: Combinatorics and Graph Theory with Mathematica. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, pp. 83 and 144-147, 1990. Tutte, W. T. Graph Theory. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Vertex Degree

The degree of a graph vertex

of a graph

is the number of graph edges which touch . The vertex degrees

are illustrated above for a random graph. The vertex degree is also called the local degree or valency. The ordered list of vertex degrees in a given graph is called its degree sequence. A list of vertex degrees of a graph can be given by Degrees[g] in the Mathematica package Combinatorica` , and precomputed vertex degrees are available for particular embeddings of many named graphs via GraphData[graph, "Degrees"]. The minimum vertex degree in a graph 1990, p. 157). The graph vertex degree of a point in a graph, denoted , satisfies is denoted , and the maximum degree is denoted (Skiena

where

is the total number of graph edges.