We compute approximate solutions to the maximum stable set problem and the minimum graph coloring problem using a positive semidefinite relaxation. The positive semidefinite programs are solved using an implementation of the dual scaling algorithm that takes advantage of the sparsity inherent in most graphs and the structure inherent in the problem formulation. From the solution to the relaxation, we apply a randomized algorithm to find approximate maximum stable sets and a modification of a popular heuristic to find graph colorings. We obtained high quality answers for graphs with over 1000 vertices and almost 7000 edges.