Chapter 8. Finding Paths in Development
Pathfinding in graph data is the next most popular use of graph technology, after neighborhood retrieval and unbounded hierarchies.
In addition to interviewing graph users around the world for this book, we also spent a significant amount of time working with them. More often than not, our working sessions centered on finding unknown paths within graph data.
During one of those working sessions, we were training a team on popular pathfinding techniques. We were using a graph of flight paths between airports to reason about flight patterns between cities.1 We started our exercise with the two most popular questions about air travel: how many direct connections are there from this specific airport? And how many airports are reachable within two flights?
The troubleshooting discussion during the workshop led me to question how people use path information to make an informed decision.
One particularly interesting implication is related to trust.
How do you decide if you trust somebody? You trust your friends. And you probably trust friends of your friends more than you trust a random stranger. Why is that?
It is your trust in different paths between you and something else that motivates and informs your preferences.
Chapter Preview: Quantifying Trust in Networks
There are four main sections of this chapter.
Weâll first cover some more examples of how we all use paths to quantify trust. Then weâll start with an overview of the required concepts ...
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