stars and bars

Stars and bars has two distinct meanings in American usage.

It refers to the first national flag of the Confederate States of America, featuring a circle of white stars on a blue canton with red and white horizontal bars—often confused with the more familiar Confederate battle flag.

In mathematics, stars and bars is a combinatorial technique for counting ways to distribute identical objects into distinct groups, visualizing the problem as arranging stars (objects) separated by bars (dividers): Use stars and bars to find how many ways to put ten balls in four bins.