Interval graphs have been studied extensively both because they have
 many applications and because many problems which are NP-complete for
 general graphs, admit polynomial-time solutions when restricted to the class
 of interval graphs.  Formally, a graph $G$ is an {\em interval
 graph} if it can
 be represented as follows:  each vertex of $G$ corresponds to a real
 interval so that two vertices are adjacent in $G$ if and only if their
 corresponding intervals intersect.  
 
 {\em Unit interval graphs} are those which have an interval
 representation in which every interval has the same length.  Likewise,
 {\em proper interval graphs} are those which have an interval
 representation in which no interval properly contains another.
 Clearly the class of unit interval graphs is a subset of the class of
 proper interval graphs.  In 1969, Fred Roberts showed that  these classes
 are in fact equal.
 
 We study tolerance and bitolerance graphs which generalize interval
 graphs by allowing a certain amount of overlap of intervals before an
 edge is formed between the corresponding vertices. We formalize this
 notion in the talk and 
 discuss which classes have been characterized, which have efficient
 recognition algorithms, and then focus on the questions of when the
 unit and proper subclasses are equal.