Proofs of Fermat's Little Theorem - Proof By Counting Necklaces

Proof By Counting Necklaces

This is perhaps the simplest known proof, requiring the least mathematical background. It is an attractive example of a combinatorial proof (a proof that involves counting a collection of objects in two different ways).

The proof given here is an adaptation of Golomb's proof.

To keep things simple, let us assume that a is a positive integer. Consider all the possible strings of p symbols, using an alphabet with a different symbols. The total number of such strings is a p, since there are a possibilities for each of p positions (see rule of product).

For example, if p = 5 and a = 2, then we can use an alphabet with two symbols (say A and B), and there are 25 = 32 strings of length five:

AAAAA, AAAAB, AAABA, AAABB, AABAA, AABAB, AABBA, AABBB,

ABAAA, ABAAB, ABABA, ABABB, ABBAA, ABBAB, ABBBA, ABBBB,

BAAAA, BAAAB, BAABA, BAABB, BABAA, BABAB, BABBA, BABBB,

BBAAA, BBAAB, BBABA, BBABB, BBBAA, BBBAB, BBBBA, BBBBB.

We will argue below that if we remove the strings consisting of a single symbol from the list (in our example, AAAAA and BBBBB), the remaining a p − a strings can be arranged into groups, each group containing exactly p strings. It follows that a p − a is divisible by p.