ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Convex hull

Imagine you have a bag full of toys that are scattered all over your room. Now, you want to pick out the toys that form a shape on the floor. This shape should include all the toys that are touching the outside of the area you want to create. This shape is called convex hull!

In computer science, we use the term "convex hull" to describe a shape that is created when we draw a line around a set of points (like the toys in your room) so that the line connects each point that is on the outer edges.

To create a convex hull, we take all of the points we want to include in our shape and draw lines between them. We then look for any points that are inside the shape we just created and eliminate them. This process is repeated until we have a shape that includes all of our points on the outer edges, and no points are inside.

Convex hulls have many practical uses in computer science. For example, they are used for collision detection, computer graphics, and data analysis. The concept of the convex hull is easy to understand when we think of it like building a shape out of toys on the floor.