Closeness Centrality of Asymmetric Trees and Triangular Numbers

Abstract

The combinatorial problem in this paper is motivated by a variant of the famous traveling salesman problem where the salesman must return to the starting point after each delivery. The total length of a delivery route is related to a metric known as closeness centrality. The closeness centrality of a vertex v in a graph G was defined in 1950 by Bavelas to be CC(v)=|V(G)|−1SD(v), where SD(v) is the sum of the distances from v to each of the other vertices (which is one-half of the total distance in the delivery route). We provide a real-world example involving the Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority rail network and identify stations whose SD values are nearly identical, meaning they have a similar proximity to other stations in the network. We then consider theoretical aspects involving asymmetric trees. For integer values of k, we considered the asymmetric tree with paths of lengths k,2k,…,nk that are incident to a center vertex. We investigated trees with different values of k, and for k=1 and k=2, we established necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of two vertices with identical SD values, which has a surprising connection to the triangular numbers. Additionally, we investigated asymmetric trees with paths incident to two vertices and found a sufficient condition for vertices to have equal SD values. This leads to new combinatorial proofs of identities arising from Pascal’s triangle.