Browsing by Author "von Bell, Matias Kaspar"

This thesis presents and proves Pólya's enumeration theorem (PET) along with the necessary background knowledge. Also, applications are presented in coloring problems, graph theory, number theory and chemistry. The statement and proof of PET is preceded by detailed discussions on Burnside's lemma, the cycle index, weight functions, configurations and the configuration generating function. After the proof of PET, it is applied to the enumerations of colorings of polytopes of dimension 2 and 3, including necklaces, the cube, and the truncated icosahedron. The general formulas for the number of n-colorings of the latter two are also derived. In number theory, work by Chong-Yun Chao is presented, which uses PET to derive generalized versions of Fermat's Little Theorem and Gauss' Theorem. In graph theory, some classic graphical enumeration results of Pólya, Harary and Palmer are presented, particularly the enumeration of the isomorphism classes of unlabeled trees and (v,e)-graphs. The enumeration of all (5,e)-graphs is given as an example. The thesis is concluded with a presentation of how Pólya applied his enumeration technique to the enumeration of chemical compounds.