HW2: Graph Coloring

For this homework you will implement a simple distributed hill-climbing algorithm and test its behaviors on various graphs. The goal is for you to become proficient at using the NetLogo link primitives and to gain first-hand experience with the problems and benefits of distributed hill-climbing algorithms.

1. Read the link primitives section of the NetLogo manual.
2. Implement a NetLogo model that generates a random graph, by using a simple algorithm: first create num-nodes nodes (a slider), then create num-nodes * edge-ratio edges, each one connected to two randomly chosen nodes.
3. Implement another button which instead generates the graph using preferential attachment. Specifally: first create num-nodes nodes, then create num-nodes * edge-ratio edges, each one created by picking two nodes chosen with a probability proportional to their degree (number of incident edges). For example, if there are 3 nodes, one with two edges and the other two with one edge each (the graph is a line) then the one with two edges gets chosen with probability 2 / 4 = 1/2, while each other two nodes is chosen with probability 1/4. The denominator is always the total number of edges and the numerator is the degree for that node.
4. Implement a num-colors slider and randomly color the nodes using that many colors.
5. Implement a layout button which calls one of the built-in NetLogo layout methods to make the graph look pretty.
6. Implement a basic hill-climbing algorithm. On each tick every node looks at the colors of its neighbors and changes its color to one that does not conflict with any. If there is no such color then it will change to one that minimizes the number of constraint violations with its neighbors (min-conflict heuristic). If at any tick none of the nodes changes its color then we stop since a coloring has been found.
7. Add a test button which performs a more extensive test. Specifically, for the given number of nodes and edge ratio, it will generate 100 graphs of random and preferential attachment types and run the hill climbing algorithm, plotting the number of time steps it took to find a solution in a histogram, one for random and one for preferential attachment. You will need to set an arbitrary large number for the 'does not stop' case.

Add your name and describe your results in the model description tab. Email me you .nlogo file by Wednesday September 21 @9am.