Heavy-tailed distribution

A heavy-tailed distribution is like a big, big pile of toys. It means that some of the toys in the pile are really popular and lots of kids want to play with them, but other toys are not so popular and only a few kids want to play with them.

When we say "heavy-tailed," we mean that there are a lot of toys that are not very popular, but just a few toys that are really, really, popular.

For example, let's say we have a bunch of candy bars. Most of them are kind of boring and not very exciting, but a few of them are really special, like they have fancy nuts in them or they're made with really high-quality chocolate.

If we graphed how many candy bars we have of each type, it would look like a long tail that stretches out to the right. The tail is long because there are a lot of candy bars that are not very special, but a few at the end of the tail that are really special.

So, when we say something has a heavy-tailed distribution, we mean that there are a lot of things that are not very popular, but just a few things that are extremely popular.