ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff formula

Ok, imagine you have a toy box, and you like to play with different toys inside it, like balls, cars and stuffed animals. But sometimes, you want to combine two toys together to make a new toy or game.

Sometimes it's easy, like when you want to play with a car and a ramp, you just put the car on the ramp and push it. But sometimes it's harder, like when you want to combine a ball and a stuffed animal. You can't just put them together and expect them to work, right?

Well, the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula is like a set of instructions that tells you how to combine different "toys" together, but for grown-ups who like math.

You see, math has its own set of toys called "operators" that we can play with. These are special mathematical symbols that change or move things around, like plus, minus, multiply and divide. And just like real toys, sometimes we want to combine them together to make something new.

The Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula helps us do that. It's a special formula that tells us how to combine different operators together, like putting a ramp on top of a car, or putting a stuffed animal inside a ball.

It's kind of complicated and sounds like gibberish, but some really smart people figured it out and it helps us solve a lot of problems in physics and mathematics. So, if you ever become a mathematician or scientist, maybe you'll get to play with the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula too!