For an edge , put and . Since , we have .
The random normal has the isotropic Gaussian distribution . Its distribution is invariant under orthogonal transformations; if are linearly independent, its projection onto their plane has a uniformly distributed direction. The signs of its inner products with differ in two sectors of total angle , out of . Thus random hyperplane rounding gives
If , the signs differ with probability one and the same formula holds with . Zero inner products have probability zero, since each is a unit vector.
If the graph has an edge, its corresponding principal block of forces , so the division by used to obtain the Gram matrix is valid. An edgeless graph can instead be colored with one color directly.
Suppose a graph with vertices and edges has a vector coloring with adjacent inner products at most . Take independent copies of random hyperplane rounding and use the signs as a color. Each edge remains monochromatic with probability at most , so the expected number of monochromatic edges is at most by linearity of expectation.
Choose . Then Markov inequality gives . On success, delete one endpoint of every monochromatic edge. This random alteration method leaves at least vertices properly colored with
The removed vertices can retain their original colors, as the semicoloring only requires the retained induced subgraph to be proper. A failed draw can be detected and repeated, with at most two trials on average. The case needs just one color. This is the elementary independent-hyperplane construction in Karger, Motwani and Sudan's paper on approximate graph coloring.