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Burnside’s lemma. (English) Zbl 1271.19001

Summary: There is a famous problem which involves discriminating the faces of a die using 3 colors: how many different patterns can be produced? This article introduces Burnside’s lemma which is a powerful method for handling such problems. It requires a knowledge of group theory, but is not so difficult and is likely to be understood by elementary school pupils.

MSC:

19A22 Frobenius induction, Burnside and representation rings
00A09 Popularization of mathematics