The chromatic index of a graph. This is the minimal number of colours needed such that no two adjacent edges have the same colour.

The chromatic number of a graph. The minimal number of colors needed to color the vertices of the graph such that no two vertices which share an edge have the same color.

The Alon-Tarsi number of a graph. Let $G$ be a graph with vertices $\{1,\dots,n\}$ and edge set $E$. Let $P_G=\prod_{i < j, (i,j)\in E} x_i-x_j$ be its graph polynomial. Then the Alon-Tarsi number is the smallest number $k$ such that $P_G$ contains a monomial with exponents strictly less than $k$.

The Grundy number of a graph. The Grundy number $\Gamma(G)$ is defined to be the largest $k$ such that $G$ admits a greedy $k$-coloring. Any order of the vertices of $G$ induces a greedy coloring by assigning to the $i$-th vertex in this order the smallest positive integer such that the partial coloring remains a proper coloring. In particular, we have that $\chi(G) \leq \Gamma(G) \leq \Delta(G) + 1$, where $\chi(G)$ is the chromatic number of $G$ ([[St000098]]), and where $\Delta(G)$ is the maximal degree of a vertex of $G$ ([[St000171]]).

The distinguishing number of a graph. This is the minimal number of colours needed to colour the vertices of a graph, such that only the trivial automorphism of the graph preserves the colouring. For connected graphs, this statistic is at most one plus the maximal degree of the graph, with equality attained for complete graphs, complete bipartite graphs and the cycle with five vertices, see Theorem 4.2 of [2].