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Question in Flow Algorithms

By purple_dreams, history, 7 years ago, In English

I was studying Dinic Algorithm for maximum flow. In that if you increase the flow of an edge u-v then we decrease the flow of v-u by the same value. What is the intuition behind that. Isn't it a directed graph. If I visualize it as a pipe with oil/water flowing through the network and if u-v has 5 litres flowing how can i say -5 liters is flowing though v-u. Thank You.

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7 years ago, # |
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The reverse edge v-u is just to undo flow (backtrack) in case the algorithm makes the wrong decision initially.

See this.

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