Topological sort to find ranking – DFS and BFS

Topological sort is a graph traversal in which node v is visited only after all its dependencies are visited. The graph has to be directed and has no cycles, i.e. directed acyclic graph (DAG). Once the graph is built, we can use the algorithms to find the order. The result is not necessary unique. The algorithms of topological sorting are depth first search (DFS) and breadth first search(BFS). They both have linear time O(V+E), V is number of vertices, E is number of edges. Topological sort are usually applied to ranking and scheduling problems. Here is an example to find tournament ranking.

Facebook Interview Question:
(Modified) In a tennis tournament of N players. The following condition always hold-If player P1 has won the match with P2 and player P2 has won from P3, then Player P1 has also defeated P3. Find winner and ranking of players.

ranking with topological sort


Solution 1. DFS with stack

This algorithm based on depth first search is using the data structure stack this time. For each node and its followers (or losers in this example), call the recursion helper. For any node returns from call stack, put it in the stack. The reverse of the stack is the final sorted result.

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JavaScript

Python

Doodle

topo sort dfs doodle


Solution 2. BFS with queue

This is also known as Kahn’s algorithm. First find a list of start nodes which has no incoming edges, ie indegree is 0. Insert them into a queue. Then pull out items from the queue, update and check its followers (or losers in this example)’ indegrees. If the indegree is 0, add to the queue. Repeat until all nodes are checked. The sequence pulled from the queue is the final sorted result.

Java

JavaScript

Python

Doodle

topo sort bfs doodle

Output:
{P1=[P5], P2=[P5], P3=[P2], P4=[P3, P1], P5=[]}
Topological sort dfs: [P4, P3, P2, P1, P5]
Topological sort bfs: [P4, P3, P1, P2, P5]

O Notation:
Time complexity: O(V+E)
Space complexity: O(V)
V is number of nodes, E is number of edges

What algorithms is used for topological sort BFS?

Topological sort is used in directed acyclic graph DAG. BFS uses Kahn’s algorithm. The algorithm uses graph indegree and a data structure queue. The time complexity O(V+E) and space complexity O(V). V is number of nodes (vertices), E is number of edges.


Download


Download FindRankingWithTopoSort.java
Download FindRankingWithTopoSort.js
Download FindRankingWithTopoSort.py
Big O notation cheat sheet DFS and BFS

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