ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Interval order

Okay kiddo, you know how sometimes we have a list of things that we need to do, like brushing our teeth and then putting on our pajamas? And we know that we can only put on our pajamas after we brush our teeth, right? That's kind of like what an interval order is.

An interval order is a way of organizing things in a certain order, where each thing is dependent on the one before it. It's like a big chain, where one link is connected to the next link, and so on.

For example, imagine we have a bunch of colored blocks: red, green, blue, and yellow. If we say that blue has to come before green, and green has to come before yellow, that means we have an interval order. We can't put yellow before green, or green before blue, because then the whole order would be messed up.

Interval orders are important because they help us make decisions about what we need to do next. Just like how we know we have to brush our teeth before we put on our pajamas, interval orders can help us figure out what steps we need to take in order to achieve a goal.