[Math] The number of ways of seating 6 people around 2 (circular, indistinguishable) tables

combinatorics

In a textbook there is a problem asking for the number of ways of seating 6 people around 2 circular and indistinguishable tables. The textbook gives this answer:
There are 3 cases to consider:
1)5+1

2)4+2

3)3+3

In the third case, it says that the number of ways is:
$$\frac{1}{2}\left( \begin{array}{l}6\\3\end{array} \right) \times 2! \times 2! = 40
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$$

I think it has something to do with the tables being indistinguishable, but why do we divide by 2 (or 2!)?

Thanks in advance

Best Answer

Forget about the tables.

There are $\binom{6}{3}=20$ ways to choose $3$ people. This double-counts the number of ways to divide the $6$ people into two groups of $3$, for the choice of A, B, C leads to the same splitting as the choice D, E, F. So the number of splittings is $10$.

By contrast, there are $\binom{4}{2}$ ways to split the group into $2$ parts, one with $4$ and the other with $2$. No splitting gets double-counted.

The circular permutation parts are dealt with in the usual way.

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