Rotation-distinct rings of three red, three blue
Question
Six beads, three red and three blue, are threaded onto a circular bracelet. Two bracelets count as the same if one can be rotated into the other; reflections (turning the bracelet over) are not treated as the same, so for instance and are different. How many different bracelets are possible?
Short answer
. By Burnside's lemma, average the fixed colourings over the rotations: the identity fixes , the two rotations by a third each fix , and the others fix none, so . Concretely: all reds together, the two mirror-image '2+1' patterns, and the alternating one.
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Counting and Combinatorics
- Sample Spaces, Events, and the Probability Axioms
- Conditional Probability, Total Probability, and Bayes' Rule
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