Graph representations are methods to store and visualize graphs, with common forms being adjacency lists and adjacency matrices, each having its advantages depending on the use case.

Graph representations are essential techniques for storing and visualizing graph structures in computer science, allowing for efficient traversal and manipulation of nodes and edges. The two most common representations of graphs are adjacency lists and adjacency matrices, each with its own advantages and trade-offs. An adjacency list is a collection of lists or arrays where each index represents a vertex in the graph, and each element in the list corresponds to its neighboring vertices. This representation is memory efficient, especially for sparse graphs, where the number of edges is much less than the maximum possible edges. The time complexity for checking the existence of an edge is O(n) in the worst case, where n is the number of neighbors. In contrast, an adjacency matrix is a 2D array where rows and columns represent vertices, and each cell indicates whether an edge exists between the corresponding vertices (typically using 1 for an edge and 0 for no edge). This representation is more memory-intensive, requiring O(V^2) space, where V is the number of vertices, making it less suitable for sparse graphs. However, it provides constant-time complexity O(1) for checking edge existence, making it advantageous for dense graphs. Choosing the appropriate graph representation depends on the specific requirements of the application, such as memory constraints, the need for fast edge lookups, or the sparsity of the graph. Understanding these representations is crucial for effectively working with graph algorithms and solving complex problems in computer science.