ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Informatics (academic field)

Informatics is a subject that helps people use computers to help them do lots of important things, like solving problems, making decisions, or just making things easier. It's like a big puzzle that helps you figure out how to organize information and use it to make your life better.

So, imagine you have a toy box with lots of toys in it. You need to decide which toys you want to play with and put the others away. You might organize them by color, size, or type of toy, so you can easily find what you want to play with.

That's what informatics does, but for things like big data sets, like all the books in a library or all the medical records in a hospital. It helps people organize and analyze that information so they can make better decisions, like choosing the best treatment for a patient or predicting weather patterns.

Informatics is a really important field because it helps us make sense of all the information we have access to, and use it to improve our lives.