Solution

The Round Table

Show the problem again

In how many distinct ways can 8 people be seated around a circular table, where two seatings are considered the same if one is a rotation of the other?

Worked solution

The answer is 5040. Fix one person's seat to kill the rotational symmetry; the remaining 7 people can be arranged in the other seats in 7! = 5040 ways. Equivalently, 8!/8 = 7!, since each circular arrangement corresponds to 8 rotations of a linear one.

Source: Standard circular-permutation exercise from introductory combinatorics texts. Statement written for AxiomIQ.