Given a finite group G, the generators of its Burnside ring Ω(G) are the formal sums of isomorphism classes of finite G-sets. For the ring structure, addition is given by disjoint union of G-sets and multiplication by their Cartesian product.

The Burnside ring is a free Z-module, whose generators are the (isomorphism classes of) orbit types of G.

If G acts on a finite set X, then one can write ${\textstyle X=\bigcup _{i}X_{i}}$  (disjoint union), where each X_i is a single G-orbit. Choosing any element x_i in X_i creates an isomorphism G/G_i → X_i, where G_i is the stabilizer (isotropy) subgroup of G at x_i. A different choice of representative y_i in X_i gives a conjugate subgroup to G_i as stabilizer. This shows that the generators of Ω(G) as a Z-module are the orbits G/H as H ranges over conjugacy classes of subgroups of G.

In other words, a typical element of Ω(G) is

Much as character theory simplifies working with group representations, marks simplify working with permutation representations and the Burnside ring.

If G acts on X, and H ≤ G (H is a subgroup of G), then the mark of H on X is the number of elements of X that are fixed by every element of H: ${\displaystyle m_{X}(H)=\left|X^{H}\right|}$ , where

${\displaystyle X^{H}=\{x\in X\mid h\cdot x=x,\forall h\in H\}.}$ 

If H and K are conjugate subgroups, then m_X(H) = m_X(K) for any finite G-set X; indeed, if K = gHg⁻¹ then X^K = g · X^H.

It is also easy to see that for each H ≤ G, the map Ω(G) → Z : X ↦ m_X(H) is a homomorphism. This means that to know the marks of G, it is sufficient to evaluate them on the generators of Ω(G), viz. the orbits G/H.

For each pair of subgroups H,K ≤ G define

${\displaystyle m(K,H)=\left|[G/K]^{H}\right|=\#\left\{gK\in G/K\mid HgK=gK\right\}.}$ 

This is m_X(H) for X = G/K. The condition HgK = gK is equivalent to g⁻¹Hg ≤ K, so if H is not conjugate to a subgroup of K then m(K, H) = 0.

To record all possible marks, one forms a table, Burnside's Table of Marks, as follows: Let G₁ (= trivial subgroup), G₂, ..., G_N = G be representatives of the N conjugacy classes of subgroups of G, ordered in such a way that whenever G_i is conjugate to a subgroup of G_j, then i ≤ j. Now define the N × N table (square matrix) whose (i, j)th entry is m(G_i, G_j). This matrix is lower triangular, and the elements on the diagonal are non-zero so it is invertible.

It follows that if X is a G-set, and u its row vector of marks, so u_i = m_X(G_i), then X decomposes as a disjoint union of a_i copies of the orbit of type G_i, where the vector a satisfies,

aM = u,

where M is the matrix of the table of marks. This theorem is due to (Burnside 1897).

The table of marks for the cyclic group of order 6:

The table of marks for the symmetric group S₃:

The dots in the two tables are all zeros, merely emphasizing the fact that the tables are lower-triangular.

(Some authors use the transpose of the table, but this is how Burnside defined it originally.)

The fact that the last row is all 1s is because [G/G] is a single point. The diagonal terms are m(H, H) = | N_G(H)/H |. The numbers in the first column show the degree of the representation.

The ring structure of Ω(G) can be deduced from these tables: the generators of the ring (as a Z-module) are the rows of the table, and the product of two generators has mark given by the product of the marks (so component-wise multiplication of row vectors), which can then be decomposed as a linear combination of all the rows. For example, with S₃,

${\displaystyle [G/\mathbf {Z} _{2}]\cdot [G/\mathbf {Z} _{3}]=[G/1],}$ 

as (3, 1, 0, 0).(2, 0, 2, 0) = (6, 0, 0, 0).

Associated to any finite set X is a vector space V = V_X, which is the vector space with the elements of X as the basis (using any specified field). An action of a finite group G on X induces a linear action on V, called a permutation representation. The set of all finite-dimensional representations of G has the structure of a ring, the representation ring, denoted R(G).

For a given G-set X, the character of the associated representation is

${\displaystyle \chi (g)=m_{X}(\langle g\rangle )}$ 

where ${\displaystyle \langle g\rangle }$  is the cyclic group generated by ${\displaystyle g}$ .

The resulting map

${\displaystyle \beta :\Omega (G)\longrightarrow R(G)}$ 

taking a G-set to the corresponding representation is in general neither injective nor surjective.

The simplest example showing that β is not in general injective is for G = S₃ (see table above), and is given by

${\displaystyle \beta (2[S_{3}/\mathbf {Z} _{2}]+[S_{3}/\mathbf {Z} _{3}])=\beta ([S_{3}]+2[S_{3}/S_{3}]).}$ 

The Burnside ring for compact groups is described in (tom Dieck 1987).

The Segal conjecture relates the Burnside ring to homotopy.

• Burnside category

• Burnside, William (1897), Theory of groups of finite order, Cambridge University Press
• tom Dieck, Tammo (1987), Transformation groups, de Gruyter Studies in Mathematics, vol. 8, Walter de Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-009745-0, MR 0889050, OCLC 217014538
• Dress, Andreas (1969), "A characterization of solvable groups", Math. Z., 110 (3): 213–217, doi:10.1007/BF01110213
• Kerber, Adalbert (1999), Applied finite group actions, Algorithms and Combinatorics, vol. 19 (2nd ed.), Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag, ISBN 978-3-540-65941-9, MR 1716962, OCLC 247593131
• Solomon, L. (1967), "The Burnside algebra of a finite group", J. Comb. Theory, 1: 603–615