ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Gabriel–Rosenberg reconstruction theorem

Imagine you have a puzzle, but the pieces are all mixed up and you don't know what the picture is supposed to look like. You could try to put the pieces together by guessing, but it would take a really long time and you might not even get it right.

The Gabriel-Rosenberg Reconstruction Theorem is kind of like a shortcut for solving puzzles like this. It says that if you know just a little bit about what the picture is supposed to look like, you can use that information to figure out where the pieces go much more quickly.

The theorem is named after two mathematicians, Gabriel and Rosenberg, who figured out how to use this shortcut to solve a problem in computer science. Basically, they showed that if you have a set of points in space (kind of like puzzle pieces), and you know that they are supposed to be connected by some kind of structure (like the edges of a puzzle), you can use that knowledge to figure out exactly what the structure should look like.

This is really useful for things like creating 3D models of objects or maps of networks, because it lets you take a bunch of disconnected points and turn them into something that makes sense. And all you need is a little bit of information to get started!