The interconnected objects are represented by mathematical abstractions called vertices, and the links that connect some pairs of vertices are called edges. Typically, a graph is depicted in diagrammatic form as a set of dots for the vertices, joined by lines or curves for the edges.
The edges may be directed or undirected. For example, if the vertices represent people at a party, and there is an edge between two people if they shake hands, then this is an undirected graph, because if person A shook hands with person B, then person B also shook hands with person A. On the other hand, if the vertices represent people at a party, and there is an edge from person A to person B when person A knows of person B, then this graph is directed, because knowledge of someone is not necessarily a symmetric relation (that is, one person knowing another person does not necessarily imply the reverse; for example, many fans may know of a celebrity, but the celebrity is unlikely to know of all their fans). This latter type of graph is called a directed graph and the edges are called directed edges or arcs.
