The Relative Worst Order Ratio Applied to Seat Reservation

The seat reservation problem is the problem of assigning passengers to seats on a train with n seats and k stations enroute in an online manner. The performance of algorithms for this problem is studied using the relative worst order ratio, a fairly new measure for the quality of online algorithms, which allows for direct comparisons between algorithms. This study has yielded new separations between algorithms. For example, for both variants of the problem considered, using the relative worst order ratio, First-Fit and Best-Fit are shown to be better than Worst-Fit.