ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Gaussian binomial coefficients

Gaussian binomial coefficients are like fancy stickers that help count how many ways you can pick things from a group.

Imagine you have a box of toys with a lot of different types of toys in it, like balls, dolls, and blocks. You want to pick out a certain number of toys, like two, but you don't care which specific toys you pick.

Gaussian binomial coefficients come in handy because they help you count how many ways you can pick out those toys without worrying about the order you pick them in or which specific toys they are. It's kind of like counting how many different outfits you can make from your toy box.

They look like little numbers that you write in a special way, with two numbers on top of each other. The top number tells you how many toys you want to pick out, and the bottom number tells you how many different types of toys there are to choose from.

For example, if your toy box has 4 different types of toys and you want to pick out 2 toys, you would write the Gaussian binomial coefficient like this: 4 choose 2. The answer to that is 6, which means there are 6 different ways you can pick out 2 toys from a group of 4, without caring which specific toys you pick.

Overall, Gaussian binomial coefficients are like special stickers that help you keep track of how many different ways you can pick out a certain number of things from a group without worrying about the details.