ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Hidden semi-Markov model

A hidden semi-Markov model is a way of predicting what might happen next based on what has happened before. It's like trying to guess what's going to happen in a story based on what's happened so far.

Imagine you're reading a story about a detective trying to solve a mystery. You don't know who the culprit is, but as the story goes on, you start to gather clues. Maybe the detective finds a fingerprint at the crime scene or overhears a suspicious conversation. These clues help you make an educated guess about who the culprit might be.

A hidden semi-Markov model works in a similar way. Instead of clues from a story, it uses data to make predictions. Let's say you're trying to predict the weather for tomorrow. You might look at the weather patterns from the past few days to make an educated guess about what the weather will be like tomorrow.

In a hidden semi-Markov model, there are two types of information: the visible information (the clues or data you can see) and the hidden information (the things you can't see, but still impact the predictions). The model uses both types of information to make predictions.

For example, let's say you're trying to predict whether or not a person will buy a product based on their behavior on a website. The visible information would be things like how many pages they visited, how long they spent on each page, and whether or not they added anything to their cart. The hidden information might be things like their motivations or preferences.

A hidden semi-Markov model takes this information and uses it to make predictions about what the person is likely to do next. It does this by looking at the patterns in the data and using those patterns to make a guess about what will happen next.

Overall, hidden semi-Markov models are a way of making predictions based on patterns in data. They use both visible and hidden information to make their predictions and can be used in a variety of applications, from weather forecasting to predicting consumer behavior.