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My definition says

A clique is a graph that has an edge connecting every pair of vertices

but as I understand, an edge connects only two vertices. Like $A-B$.

If we want to connect three vertices, we need at least two edges. For example, $A-B-C$.

I don't understand how an edge can connect every pair of vertices.

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    $\begingroup$ It's not one edge $e$ that connects all the pairs. For each pair $u,v\in V$ there is an edge $e_{uv}$ that connects the two nodes. That is, a clique is a (sub-)graph that contains all possible edges. $\endgroup$
    – adrianN
    Commented Dec 15, 2016 at 14:55

1 Answer 1

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Recalling that a clique is a subset $C$ of vertices of an undirected graph such that the subgraph induced by $C$ is fully connected. That is, every two distinct vertices in $C$ are connected by a distinct edge of the graph. This means different edges, not the same.

So, on a clique $C$ containing $k$ vertices $v_1, v_2,..,v_k$, there are $\frac{k(k-1)}2$ edges connecting them, that is the number of possible unordered pairs on $k$ elements.

Example

enter image description here

As you can see in the previous picture, this is a clique on four vertices $\{{1,2,3,4}\}$, so there is a different edge connecting every edge (i.e. $(1,2)$,$(1,3)$,$(1,4)$,$(2,3)$,$(2,4)$,$(3,4)$).

You can count them and see that there are exactly $6 = \frac{4\times 3}{2}$ edges.

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    $\begingroup$ How do you know there are k(k-1)/2 edges? $\endgroup$
    – yashirq
    Commented Dec 15, 2016 at 15:03
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    $\begingroup$ For every 2 vertices there is an edge. How many pairs of vertices do you have from $n$? $\binom{n}{2}$ $\endgroup$
    – Eugene
    Commented Dec 16, 2016 at 0:05

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