Ford-Fulkerson Method: Disjoint-set Data Structures

This lecture covers the Ford-Fulkerson method for finding the maximal flow in a network, starting with an initial flow and iteratively increasing it along augmenting paths until no more paths can be found. The lecture also explains how to determine the running time of the method and why it works by relating it to matching problems. Additionally, the lecture introduces disjoint-set data structures, also known as union-find, which maintain dynamic sets with representative elements. Operations like MAKE-SET and UNION are discussed, along with the list representation of sets and the union operation. Various strategies for union operations are explored, such as appending one set's list to another. The lecture concludes with practical examples and applications of these concepts.