5 ms·

ELI5 posts are reduced to fantasy by the attention span of actual 5 year olds if nothing else. :-)

by whatshisface 4y ago

saghm 4y ago
Not all five year olds are the same, and the premise is that a 5 year old who wanted to know asked.
- whatshisface 4y ago
  Most young children want to know everything, it's the attention span to make it through an explanation of prime numbers that would be rare.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Brain development I would guess too. We are talking 5 year olds. If a 5 year old can read and write well that is pretty advanced. Mathematics comes later. They might count on fingers, know some immediate additions, and vaguely understand the concept of multiplication.
  - mrcockatoo 4y ago
    Okay, so let us try to explain the concept of looking for large primes by analogy so we don't have to explain all the mathy stuff. If you tried to convey this to an actual five year old you would probably have to speak more in questions to keep them engaged and interact more and use even simpler language but all that is hard to convey in written text in a language that I never spoke to a five year old. But I digress, so here we go: You know how some things are red and some are not? There are probably multiple red things in the same room as you are right now. Most people can easily tell if something is red or not by simply looking at it. But what about places we cannot see? Even though we have never been there, it is a save bet that there are red things in let's say New York. And if we wanted to make sure, we could book a flight and go check. But is there something red in every village in the world? My guess would be yes, but we do not know for sure and it will be hard to visit every place because there are so many. At this point you might have explained some things, but if you have not lost them yet you could take this further. There are places even further away than every village. We know that Mars is red because it is so big and people have sent a robot there to be absolutely sure. But what about other planets? It is hard to tell because planets can be very far away and red things can be very small. And going there is no option because even the fastest rocket would not get there any time soon. What this post mentions is the equivalent of someone building a very precise telescope fixed at a very specific place very far away and they saw something red there. Here the analogy breaks because there are other more conceptual problems with building such a telescope. Otherwise, I am surprised how many similarities there are actually :)

ELI5 posts are reduced to fantasy by the attention span of actual 5 year olds if nothing else. :-)

saghm 4y ago

Not all five year olds are the same, and the premise is that a 5 year old who wanted to know asked.

whatshisface 4y ago
Most young children want to know everything, it's the attention span to make it through an explanation of prime numbers that would be rare.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Brain development I would guess too. We are talking 5 year olds. If a 5 year old can read and write well that is pretty advanced. Mathematics comes later. They might count on fingers, know some immediate additions, and vaguely understand the concept of multiplication.
- mrcockatoo 4y ago
  Okay, so let us try to explain the concept of looking for large primes by analogy so we don't have to explain all the mathy stuff. If you tried to convey this to an actual five year old you would probably have to speak more in questions to keep them engaged and interact more and use even simpler language but all that is hard to convey in written text in a language that I never spoke to a five year old. But I digress, so here we go: You know how some things are red and some are not? There are probably multiple red things in the same room as you are right now. Most people can easily tell if something is red or not by simply looking at it. But what about places we cannot see? Even though we have never been there, it is a save bet that there are red things in let's say New York. And if we wanted to make sure, we could book a flight and go check. But is there something red in every village in the world? My guess would be yes, but we do not know for sure and it will be hard to visit every place because there are so many. At this point you might have explained some things, but if you have not lost them yet you could take this further. There are places even further away than every village. We know that Mars is red because it is so big and people have sent a robot there to be absolutely sure. But what about other planets? It is hard to tell because planets can be very far away and red things can be very small. And going there is no option because even the fastest rocket would not get there any time soon. What this post mentions is the equivalent of someone building a very precise telescope fixed at a very specific place very far away and they saw something red there. Here the analogy breaks because there are other more conceptual problems with building such a telescope. Otherwise, I am surprised how many similarities there are actually :)