Celebrity

In computer science, the term „celebrity“ often refers to a specific type of problem in graph theory, particularly in social network analysis. In this context, a celebrity is defined as a person in a social network who is known by everyone else but does not know anyone. In a directed graph representation where nodes represent individuals and edges represent the knowledge or recognition relationship, a celebrity node would have incoming edges from all other nodes (indicating that everyone knows them) and no outgoing edges (indicating that they do not know anyone).

The celebrity problem can be solved efficiently in a linear time complexity of O(n) using a two-pointer approach, where one searches for a potential celebrity by eliminating candidates based on mutual recognition until a single candidate remains. This concept can have applications in various areas including social media analysis, recommendation systems, and understanding information dissemination in networks.