How many ways are there to color the vertices of a square with colors . (The colorings must be different so that we can't get one from the other by a rotation.)
Solution
Consider the cases:
1. Use 1 color: ,
2. Use 2 colors: ,
3. Use 3 colors: ,
4. Use 4 colors:
The sum up will give:
Remark. We can rotate the coloring with respect to the angles . We get (the number of the rotationally distinct colorings). The arbitrary rotation of the colorings with only 1 color gives the same coloring, thus we have to add and similarly . Thus, we get
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