MRECW Students E- Learning Point Computer Security Student (CSS)

Analysis of Basic Algorithm
The above algorithm doesn’t always use minimum number of colors. Also, the number of colors used sometime depend on the order in which vertices are processed. For example, consider the following two graphs. Note that in graph on right side, vertices 3 and 4 are swapped. If we consider the vertices 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 in left graph, we can color the graph using 3 colors. But if we consider the vertices 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 in right graph, we need 4 colors.





So the order in which the vertices are picked is important. Many people have suggested different ways to find an ordering that work better than the basic algorithm on average. The most common is Welsh–Powell Algorithm which considers vertices in descending order of degrees. 

How does the basic algorithm guarantee an upper bound of d+1?
Here d is the maximum degree in the given graph. Since d is maximum degree, a vertex cannot be attached to more than d vertices. When we color a vertex, at most d colors could have already been used by its adjacent. To color this vertex, we need to pick the smallest numbered color that is not used by the adjacent vertices. If colors are numbered like 1, 2, …., then the value of such smallest number must be between 1 to d+1 (Note that d numbers are already picked by adjacent vertices).