Online Graph Coloring Against a Randomized Adversary

Abstract

We consider an online model where an adversary constructs a set of [Formula: see text] instances [Formula: see text] instead of one single instance. The algorithm knows [Formula: see text] and the adversary will choose one instance from [Formula: see text] at random to present to the algorithm. We further focus on adversaries that construct sets of [Formula: see text]-chromatic instances. In this setting, we provide upper and lower bounds on the competitive ratio for the online graph coloring problem as a function of the parameters in this model. Both bounds are linear in [Formula: see text] and matching upper and lower bound are given for a specific set of algorithms that we call “minimalistic online algorithms”.