Verified Analysis of List Update Algorithms

This paper presents a machine-verified analysis of a number of classical algorithms for the list update problem: 2-competitiveness of move-to-front, the lower bound of 2 for the competitiveness of deterministic list update algorithms and 1.6-competitiveness of the randomized COMB algorithm, the best randomized list update algorithm known to date. The analysis is verified with help of the theorem prover Isabelle; some low-level proofs could be automated