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content/blog/drawing-trees-with-tikz-latex.md

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+---
+title: "Drawing Trees in LaTex with Tikz"
+date: 2022-12-06T11:01:24-05:00
+draft: false 
+tags: ["LaTex"]
+math: false
+---
+
+For the longest time I've been avoiding TIkz because I imagined it being too difficult to learn. Usually I create a graphic using a program like [Draw.IO](https://draw.io) and import it as an image. Though this time around, I decided that I'm going to learn how to make trees in Tikz. It turns out, it's not as bad as I anticated.
+
+I'm only going to provide a few simple examples in this post. To learn more check out the [Tikz documentation on trees](https://tikz.dev/tikz-trees).
+
+Remember to have `\usepackage{tikz}` in the preamble.
+
+To create a Tikz figure, you'll need to create a `tikzpicture` environment
+
+```latex
+\begin{tikzpicture}
+ % Tikz Code Here
+\end{tikzpicture}
+```
+
+Every tree first begins with a root node.
+
+```latex
+\begin{tikzpicture}
+	\node {Root Node};
+\end{tikzpicture}
+```
+
+The semicolon at the end denotes the end of a `tikz` command.
+
+Now let's make the root node have one child node.
+
+```latex
+\begin{tikzpicture}
+	\node {Root Node}
+		child {node {Child Node}};
+\end{tikzpicture}
+```
+
+![Screenshot of tree with one node on each level](/files/images/blog/20221206111634.png)                   
+
+Notice that the text of the nodes are within the `{}` after the node command.
+
+To create another child for a node, place it in the same level as the existing child.
+
+```latex
+\begin{tikzpicture}
+	\node {Root Node}
+		child {node {Left Child}}
+		child {node {Right Child}};
+\end{tikzpicture}
+```
+
+![Screenshot of tree with the root node having two child nodes](/files/images/blog/20221206111922.png)
+
+The rendered tree may have text overlap as shown in the last screenshot. This is where `tikz` options come in. We can define the seperation distance between siblings. I don't have many tips for choosing the value other than to play around and see how it looks.
+
+```latex
+\begin{tikzpicture}
+[
+    level 1/.style={sibling distance=25mm}
+]
+	\node {Root Node}
+		child {node {Left Child}}
+		child {node {Right Child}};
+\end{tikzpicture}
+```
+
+![Improved screenshot of previous tree but with well separated child nodes](/files/images/blog/20221206112150.png)
+
+To show how the child nesting works, I'll finish by giving the right child two children nodes.
+
+```latex
+\begin{tikzpicture}
+[
+    level 1/.style={sibling distance=25mm},
+    level 2/.style={sibling distance=15mm},
+]
+	\node {Root Node}
+		child {node {Left Child}}
+		child {
+		    node {Right Child}
+		    child {node {Child A}}
+		    child {node {Child B}}
+		};
+\end{tikzpicture}
+```
+
+![Screenshot of a tree similar to the previous tree, but with the right child having two cchild nodes one with the label A and the other with the label B.](/files/images/blog/20221206112444.png)