To see the difficulty more explicitly, consider, for example, the flag colored with all eight stripes blue. There is obviously only one such flag, yet the solution above counts it 28 times in the 252 total obtained! How is that possible? To see how, consider two different ways to complete the coloring of the flag: (1) choose the top six stripes to be blue, then choose to color both of the last two stripes blue also, and (2) choose the bottom six stripes to be blue, then choose to color both of the first two stripes blue also. In either case, we arrive at the same “all blue” flag, but from the point of view of the solution above, these flag-colorings were obtained differently and are therefore counted as two different flags. In fact, there would be 28 different flags if we kept track of which six of eight stripes were chosen first. For instance, suppose we place a gold star next to each stripe that is chosen among the first six for blue color. For an “all blue” flag, there are C(8,6) = 28 different patterns of gold stars that could occur on the stripes. The solution above incorrectly counts each of these 28 outcomes as a different flag.