The number of ways of placing 4 blue beads, 3 yellow beads, and 1 green bead on a circular necklace.

combinatoricssolution-verification

I am trying to compute the number of ways of placing 4 blue beads, 3 yellow beads, and 1 green bead on a circular necklace.

My thought: apply Burnside's Theorem. $$
|S| = {8\choose{4}} \cdot 4 = 280.
$$

$\mathrm{Fix}(e) = S$. Because there is only one green bead, no rotation can fix $S$. Similarly, the only way for a reflection to fix a configuration is if it fixes the
green bead. So no reflection across a line perpendicular to two edges can fix $S$. For reflections across a line through two vertices, there are $2$ ways to choose where to put the green bead (the other vertex gets a yellow bead) and $3$ ways to color the other $6$ beads. So $6$ configurations in total for each reflection. We conclude
$$
N = \frac1{16}\left(280 + 4 \cdot 6\right) = 19.
$$

Am I correct here? Did I miscalculate anything? Thanks in advance!

Best Answer

The Polya Enumeration Theorem is a natural tool for problems like this and verifies that the answer is $19$.

The group of permutations is $D_8$, the dihedral group on $8$ vertices. The cycle index of $D_8$ is $$Z = \frac{1}{16} (x_1^8 + 4 x_1^2 x_2^3 + 5 x_2^4 + 2 x_4^2 + 4 x_8)$$ The figure inventory for three colors blue, green, and yellow is $b+g+y$. On "substitution" of the figure inventory into the cycle index, we have $$Z = \frac{1}{16}[(b+g+y)^8 + 4(b+g+y)^2 (b^2+g^2+y^2)^3 + 5(b^2+g^2+y^2)^4 + 2(b^4+g^4+y^4)^2 + 4(b^8+g^8+y^8)]$$

The coefficient of $b^4 g^1 y^3$ when $Z$ is expanded is $19$, so the number of distinct colorings with $4$ blue, $1$ green, and $3$ yellow beads is $19$.