Applications of Graph Coloring

Design and Analysis of Algorithms SCE

TY – IT – A1

Bhatukumar Bairagi 331006 22010934

Piyush Bhadane 331008 22011034

Harshal Deshpande 331018 22011190

Prasanna Eklahare 331019 22010596

Index
• Introduction
• Types of Graph Coloring
• Applications of Graph Coloring
• Example
• Conclusion
• References
Introduction
• In graph theory, graph coloring is a special case of graph labeling; it is
an assignment of labels traditionally called "colors" to elements of
a graph subject to certain constraints

• These constraints typically include:

1. Coloring in a way that no adjacent neighbour share the same color.
2. Using the minimum possible number of colors.
Chromatic Number: The smallest number of colors needed to color a
graph G is called its chromatic number. For example, the following can
be colored minimum 3 colors.

Chromatic number is denoted by x(G), means x(G) = 3.

The problem to find chromatic number of a given graph is NP Complete.

Types of Graph Coloring
• Graph Coloring In its simplest form is a way of coloring the vertices of
a graph such that no two adjacent vertices are of the same color; this
is called a vertex coloring.
• Similarly, an edge coloring assigns a color to each edge so that no two
adjacent edges are of the same color, and a face coloring of a planar
graph assigns a color to each face or region so that no two faces that
share a boundary have the same color
Vertex Coloring
• Mathematical Representation:
V (G) → N such that: ∀vi,vj∈V (G),i6=j∃(ei, ej ) ⇒ f(i) != f(j)
• Special types include Circular vertex coloring, acyclic vertex coloring,
Star vertex coloring.
Edge Coloring
• Mathematical representation:
f : E(G) → N such that ∀(ei, ej ∈ E(G)), i != j ei, ej are
adjacent ⇒ f(i) != f(j).
• Special types include Circular edge coloring, Berge-Fulkerson and Fan-
Raspaud coloring.
Face and Map coloring
• The face coloring is the method used to color areas on a political map,
and so it is the coloring associated with the Four Color theorem.
• This type of coloring requires a graph to be planar, what means the
graph can be drawn on a 2-dimensional plane without intersections
between edges. It can be done by creating a dual graph.
Applications of Graph Coloring
• Scheduling
In a job scheduling problem, Jobs can be scheduled in any order, but
pairs of jobs may be in conflict in the sense that they may not be
assigned to the same time slot, for example because they both rely on a
shared resource. 
E.g. Single and double Round Robin scheduling for 4 teams
• Register allocation:
To improve the execution time of the resulting code, one of the
techniques of compiler optimization is register allocation, where the
most frequently used values of the compiled program are kept in the
fast processor registers.
The compiler constructs an interference graph, where vertices are
variables and an edge connects two vertices if they are needed at the
same time. If the graph can be colored with k colors then any set of
variables needed at the same time can be stored in at most k registers.

• Other applications include such as pattern matching, sports

scheduling, designing seating plans, exam timetabling, the scheduling
of taxis, and solving sudoku puzzles
Art gallery problem
• Art gallery problem is defined as, Given the layout of a museum, what
is the minimum number of guards needed to guard every point in the
museum?
• This problem can be solved by triangulation the given polygon I.e.
layout of the art gallery.
• For any 3-coloring of a triangulation, there exists a color such that the
number of vertices of this color is ≤ n/3 and placing guards on these
vertices will guard the entire museum.
 Triangulation of a polygon can be
seen in the figure on right.

As seen in the example below it is possible to solve this problem by placing

less than 13/3 I.e. 4 guards
Exam scheduling problem
• Set of students: S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S6, S7, S8, S9 Examination subjects
• for each group: {algebra, real analysis, and topology}, {algebra,
operations research, and complex analysis}, {real analysis, functional
analysis, and topology}, {algebra, graph theory, and combinatorics},
{combinatorics, topology, and functional analysis}, {operations
research, graph theory, and coding theory}, {operations research,
graph theory, and number theory}, {algebra, number theory, and
coding theory}, {algebra, operations research, and real analysis}.
• Let S be a set of students, P = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10} be the set of
examinations respectively algebra, real analysis, topology, operational
research, complex analysis, functional analysis, graph theory,
combinatorics, coding theory, and number theory.

• 5 days are required and you can see below the lessons in the same
parenthesis which are on the same day {{1, 6}, {2, 8, 9}, {3, 4}, {5, 7}, {10}}
Conclusion
Thus, we have given an overview of graph coloring and its types and
explained its applications in various domains. Such as data mining,
image segmentation, clustering, image capturing, networking.

We can improve the efficiency of graph coloring test it’s applications in

various other domains such as organic chemistry, solid state physics
and statistical mechanics, electrical engineering (communication
networks and coding theory), optimization theory and operations
research.
Reference
1. Applications of Graph Coloring in Modern Computer Science by
Shamin Ahmed
2. Applications of Graph Coloring by Unal Ufuktepe and Goksen Bacak
3. A SURVEY OF GRAPH COLORING - ITS TYPES, METHODS AND
APPLICATIONS by Piotr FORMANOWICZ1, Krzysztof TANA‘1
Thank You