Bin packing using semi-ordinal data

Algorithms for the bin packing problem are examined, under the ''ordinal assumption'': initially the values of the weights are unknown, but the ordering of the weights is known. It is shown that a worst case performance ratio of @r (@r > 1 is an integer) can be achieved if @?ln [n(@r - 1) + 1]ln @[email protected]? weights among the n weights can be observed exactly, where these weights are specified by their ranks among the set of weights.