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JOURNAL OF
ALGEBRAIC
COMBINATORICS

  Editors-in-chief: C. A. Athanasiadis, T. Lam, A. Munemasa, H. Van Maldeghem
ISSN 0925-9899 (print) • ISSN 1572-9192 (electronic)
 

Balancing the n-Cube: A Census of Colorings

E.M. Palmer , R.C. Read and R.W. Robinson

DOI: 10.1023/A:1022487918212

Abstract

Weights of 1 or 0 are assigned to the vertices of the n-cube in n-dimensional Euclidean space. Such an n-cube is called balanced if its center of mass coincides precisely with its geometric center. The seldom-used n-variable form of Pólya's enumeration theorem is applied to express the number N n, 2 k of balanced configurations with 2 k vertices of weight 1 in terms of certain partitions of 2 k. A system of linear equations of Vandermonde type is obtained, from which recurrence relations are derived which are computationally efficient for fixed k. It is shown how the numbers N n, 2 k depend on the numbers A n, 2 k of specially restricted configurations. A table of values of N n, 2 k and A n, 2 k is provided for n = 3, 4, 5, and 6. The case in which arbitrary, nonnegative, integral weights are allowed is also treated. Finally, alternative derivations of the main results are developed from the perspective of superposition.

Pages: 257–273

Keywords: $n$-cube; Boolean function; Pólya enumeration; superposition

Full Text: PDF

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