It was pointed out by @chandlerc that it's not clear whether both applyUpdates and insert/deleteEdge can be used to perform multiple updates.
IMO, the confusing part was that the comment above applyUpdates made a comparison of expected update time between calling it and calling insert/deleteEdge multiple times. It's generally not possible to safely call insert/deleteEdge multiple times, which documentation for each of the 3 functions warns about, so the whole comparison makes very little sense. On top of that, the comment is already lengthy, so I think it's best to just get rid of this comparison.