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Given a hypergraph $H=(V,E)$, define for every edge $e\in E$ a linear expression with arguments corresponding with the vertices. Next, let the polynomial $p_H$ be the product of such linear expressions for all edges. Our main goal was to find a relationship between the Alon-Tarsi number of $p_H$ and the edge density of $H$. We prove that $AT(p_H)=\lceil ed(H)\rceil+1$ if all the coefficients in $p_H$ are equal to $1$. Our main result is that, no matter what those coefficients are, they can be permuted within the edges so that for the resulting polynomial $p_H^\prime$, $AT(p_H^\prime)\leq 2\lceil ed(H)\rceil+1$ holds. We conjecture that, in fact, permuting the coefficients is not necessary. If this were true, then in particular a significant generalization of the famous 1-2-3 Conjecture would follow.

We consider a graph coloring algorithm that processes vertices in order taken uniformly at random and assigns colors to them using First-Fit strategy. We show that this algorithm uses, in expectation, at most $(1 + o(1))\cdot \ln n \,/\, \ln\ln n$ different colors to color any forest with $n$ vertices. We also construct a family of forests that shows that this bound is best possible.

A family of sets in the plane is simple if the intersection of its any subfamily is arc-connected, and it is pierced by a line $L$ if the intersection of its any member with $L$ is a nonempty segment. It is proved that the intersection graphs of simple families of compact arc-connected sets in the plane pierced by a common line have chromatic number bounded by a function of their clique number., Comment: Minor changes + some additional references not included in the journal version

Several classical constructions illustrate the fact that the chromatic number of a graph can be arbitrarily large compared to its clique number. However, until very recently, no such construction was known for intersection graphs of geometric objects in the plane. We provide a general construction that for any arc-connected compact set $X$ in $\mathbb{R}^2$ that is not an axis-aligned rectangle and for any positive integer $k$ produces a family $\mathcal{F}$ of sets, each obtained by an independent horizontal and vertical scaling and translation of $X$, such that no three sets in $\mathcal{F}$ pairwise intersect and $\chi(\mathcal{F})>k$. This provides a negative answer to a question of Gyarfas and Lehel for L-shapes. With extra conditions, we also show how to construct a triangle-free family of homothetic (uniformly scaled) copies of a set with arbitrarily large chromatic number. This applies to many common shapes, like circles, square boundaries, and equilateral L-shapes. Additionally, we reveal a surprising connection between coloring geometric objects in the plane and on-line coloring of intervals on the line., Comment: Small corrections, bibliography update

In the 1970s, Erdos asked whether the chromatic number of intersection graphs of line segments in the plane is bounded by a function of their clique number. We show the answer is no. Specifically, for each positive integer $k$, we construct a triangle-free family of line segments in the plane with chromatic number greater than $k$. Our construction disproves a conjecture of Scott that graphs excluding induced subdivisions of any fixed graph have chromatic number bounded by a function of their clique number., Comment: Small corrections, bibliography update

For positive integers $w$ and $k$, two vectors $A$ and $B$ from $\mathbb{Z}^w$ are called $k$-crossing if there are two coordinates $i$ and $j$ such that $A[i]-B[i]\geq k$ and $B[j]-A[j]\geq k$. What is the maximum size of a family of pairwise $1$-crossing and pairwise non-$k$-crossing vectors in $\mathbb{Z}^w$? We state a conjecture that the answer is $k^{w-1}$. We prove the conjecture for $w\leq 3$ and provide weaker upper bounds for $w\geq 4$. Also, for all $k$ and $w$, we construct several quite different examples of families of desired size $k^{w-1}$. This research is motivated by a natural question concerning the width of the lattice of maximum antichains of a partially ordered set., Comment: Corrections and improvements