Association scheme

An association scheme is like a group of toys that are all categorized and organized in a special way. Think about how you might organize your toys into groups, like all your cars in one spot and your stuffed animals in another.

An association scheme is a special way of organizing things where everything in it is put into groups or categories based on how they relate to each other. For example, all the cars in your toy collection might be sorted based on their color, size or type of car. This makes it easier to find and understand the different toys in your collection.

In a more grown-up sense, association schemes are used in mathematics to help understand relationships between objects or sets. Just like you organizing your toys, mathematicians might use an association scheme to group things like graphs, designs, or codes based on how they are related to each other.

So, an association scheme is kind of like a big toy box, where everything in it is carefully organized and categorized so that we can see how everything relates to each other.