Can these piles of balls be best described as 三堆颜色不同的球 or 颜色不同的三堆球 or something else?

Question

_{(Thanks to ChatGPT for saving me time with the above drawing.)}

I'm wondering if describing these piles of balls is as finicky in Chinese as in English. I'd naturally use the terms:

• 三堆颜色不同的球 is equivalent to "three piles of differently colored balls", which could describe either situation,

• 颜色不同的三堆球 is equivalent to "three differently colored piles of balls", which seems to precisely describe the situation on the left.

Maybe there's better choices. I don't really have a concise way to describe the situation on the right.

Question: Can these piles of balls be best described as 三堆颜色不同的球 or 颜色不同的三堆球 or something else?

Answer 1

在左边，我们看到三列彩色圆圈。每一列中的圆圈都是相同的颜色，但每一列都是不同的颜色。

在右边，我们也看到三列彩色圆圈。每一列中的圆圈都是不一样的颜色。

Answer 2

My personal choice would be,

三行不同颜色的球

Comment,

堆 gives the idea of the balls being clumped together as in a heap or pile, whereas the image shows the balls separated evenly in neat rows, thus I prefer 行

Answer 3

I would likely describe the groups of balls in the following ways:

the group on left- 三排/列/行各具一色的一組球 - a group of three rows/lines/columns of balls, each row/line/column contains balls having a color different than the other rows/lines.

the group on right - 三排/列/行顏色混雜(不一)的一組球 - a group of three rows/lines/columns of balls, each row/line/column contains balls of different colors arranged in random.

Answer 4

三列净色的圆点 (Three columns of dots of a solid color)

三列混色的圆点 (Three columns of dots of mixed colors)

• 列 = columns/row

• 3D looking circle is 球, 2D looking circle is 圆点

• 堆 means "pile", 三堆球 is a wrong description

Answer 5

I would personally feel 三堆颜色不同的球 only refers to the right while 颜色不同的三堆球 has some ambiguity when it comes to whether 颜色不同的 is 堆 or 球.

However, despite the ambiguity, I feel the expression itself is natural. I didn't quite feel that 堆 is wrong because the picture does give me a sense of gravity (?) and is enough to suggest a pile in a more abstract sense, but this is something 见仁见智.

If I were you, I would use a more complex expression to make things clear.

The left: 有三堆球，同一堆里的球颜色相同，但堆和堆之间颜色不同。

The right: 有三堆球，球的颜色两两不同。