Directed acyclic graph

A Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) is a type of graph structure in which it's impossible to movecome acrossback to the entiresame graphnode by starting attraversing onethe edgeedges.

In graph theory, a graph is a structure consisting of nodes that are connected by edges. You can think of the nodes as point on the graphpoints and the edges as lines. Or in terms of a spreadsheet, the nodes would be the cells, with the edges being thedrawn outlinesfrom ofpoint theto cellspoint.

'Acyclic' means that it is impossible to start at one point, or edge, of the graph and thecome traverseback theto entireit graphby following the edges. Whereas a cycle comes back around to it's original starting point like a circle, an acyclic graph continues moving in a linear direction and never does circle back to the starting point. To continue with the earlier example of chicken and rice dinner, you can't move on the graph from buying the rice to preparing the food to buying the chicken, as that would require moving backwards across the graph. It's impossible to prepare the chicken if you haven't yet purchased it.