I have seen in other questions (Painting the faces of a cube with distinct colours) , and found for myself there are 30 colorings of the cube with exactly 6 colors.

kybudmanqm

kybudmanqm

Answered question

2022-09-04

I have seen in other questions (Painting the faces of a cube with distinct colours) , and found for myself there are 30 colorings of the cube with exactly 6 colors. My issue is when I use Polya enumeration theory I take the number of colorings up to 6 to be 1 24 ( 6 6 + 3 6 4 + 12 6 3 + 8 6 2 ) and subtract the number of colorings up to 5, 1 24 ( 5 6 + 3 5 4 + 12 5 3 + 8 5 2 ) to get 1426. What is wrong with my application of Polya enumeration theory? How could I fix it?

Answer & Explanation

shosautesseleol

shosautesseleol

Beginner2022-09-05Added 16 answers

Step 1
Let f ( m ) = 1 24 ( m 6 + 3 m 4 + 12 m 3 + 8 m 2 ).
The problem is that you want to subtract the number of colorings that use 5 out of 6 colors, not the number that use 5 particular colors.
The fix to this approach would be to start by computing f ( 6 ) 6 f ( 5 ), but of course this overcounts some 5-colorings. So we proceed by inclusion-exclusion and find that the answer is
i = 0 6 ( 1 ) i ( m i ) f ( m i ) = f ( 6 ) 6 f ( 5 ) + 15 f ( 4 ) 20 f ( 3 ) + 15 f ( 2 ) 6 f ( 1 ) = 30
Step 2
Another equivalent approach is to compute the exponential generating function F ( X ) = m = 0 f ( m ) X n .
It turns out that F ( X ) = e X p ( X ), where p(X) is a degree 6 polynomial. Then G ( X ) = e X F ( X ) = p ( X ) is the exponential generating function for g(m), the number of colorings with exactly m colors.
We can compute p explicitly, but it is straightforward to see that it has the same leading term as f, namely 1 24 X 6 .
Then we can compute g ( 6 ) = 6 ! [ X 6 ] p ( X ) = 6 ! 24 = 30.
Brooklynn Valencia

Brooklynn Valencia

Beginner2022-09-06Added 18 answers

Step 1
To find the number of ways to color the faces of a cube with exactly 6 colors using Polya's Enumeration Theorem:
First, as you already know, the cycle index of the symmetries of the face permutations of a cube is
Z = 1 24 ( x 1 6 + 6 x 1 2 x 4 + 3 x 1 2 x 2 2 + 8 x 3 2 + 6 x 2 3 )
The figure inventory for 6 colors represented by a,b,c,d,e,f is
a + b + c + d + e + f
Step 2
"Substituting" the figure inventory into the cycle index, we have
1 24 ( ( a + b + c + d + e + f ) 6 + 6 ( a + b + c + d + e + f ) 2 ( a 4 + b 4 + c 4 + d 4 + e 4 + f 4 ) + 3 ( a + b + c + d + e + f ) 2 ( a 2 + b 2 + c 2 + d 2 + e 2 + f 2 ) 2 + 8 ( a 3 + b 3 + c 3 + d 3 + e 3 + f 3 ) 2 + 6 ( a 2 + b 2 + c 2 + d 2 + e 2 + f 2 ) 3 )
The number of ways to color the cube using each of the six colors exactly once is the coefficient of abcdef when this polynomial is expanded. In difficult cases I would use a computer algebra to find the coefficient, but in this example it's easy to see that what we want is 1/24 the coefficient of abcdef in ( a + b + c + d + e + f ) 6 , i.e.
6 ! 24 = 30

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