Burnside’s Lemma Giving Incorrect Answer For Number of Non-Isomorphic Size 5 Tournaments

graph theorygroup-theorypermutations

The question I am looking to answer asks the following:

How many non-isomorphic size 5 tournaments exist?

The most straightforward way to approach this problem is Burnside's Lemma, which states that:

$$|X/G| = (\frac{1}{|G|})\sum_{𝛼∈G}|𝐹_𝛼|$$

where |X/G| is the number of orbits, |G| is the size of the group, and $|𝐹_𝛼|$ is the number of fixed points of set X under a given symmetry 𝛼 ∈ G. In terms of a tournament, T, of size 5, the size of the group is equal to the number of permutations of the vertices of T, which is simply 5! = 120.

Further, the number of fixed points varies with the cycle structure of T. There are seven cycle structures of T, namely:

  1. (1, 1, 1, 1, 1): This is the identity; fixes every tournament. There are 5 choose 2 edges; each edge can go both ways. Results in $2^{\binom{5}{2}}=1024$.
  2. (2, 1, 1, 1): If two vertices are swapped naturally the resulting graph isn't the original since the edge can't change direction.
  3. (2, 2, 1): Same as above.
  4. (3, 1, 1): Formula, (given by
    this post gives the number of fixed points as 20.
  5. (3, 2): See 2; the number of fixed points is 0.
  6. (4, 1): The number of fixed points is 0 because the diagonals can't be preserved.
  7. (5): The aforementioned formula gives the number of fixed points to be 24.

Applying Burnside's Lemma gives an answer of $\frac{1024+20+24}{120}$ which is not only incorrect but is not even an integer. It's well known that there are exactly 12 non-isomorphic tournaments of size 5, so what went wrong exactly in my reasoning? No matter how many times I check my work I can't figure out how the numerator can possibly ever equal 1440.

Best Answer

You have already (correctly) shown that the only permutation types with fixed points are the identity (one permutation) and those of types "3+1+1" (20 permutations) and 5 (24 permutations).

Now, as you have (also correctly) stated, the identity fixes all 1024 tournaments, but you haven't taken into account the numbers of fixed tournaments of the other two permutation types. These are

  • 16 tournaments for a permutation of type "3+1+1" and
  • 4 tournaments for a permutation of type "5".

Thus, the number of non-isomorphic tournaments is

$$\frac{1\cdot1024+20\cdot16+24\cdot4}{120}=\frac{1440}{120}=12.$$