ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Iterative proportional fitting

Iterative Proportional Fitting (IPF) is a technique used in statistics to match different groups of data. It helps make sure a set of data contains the same proportions of different kinds of people, things, or values as another set of data.

Let's say you want to share out some ice cream. You have a bowl of chocolate ice cream, a bowl of vanilla ice cream, and a bowl of strawberry ice cream. You have four people and you want to make sure each person gets the same amount of each type of ice cream. IPF can help!

IPF takes the total amount of each type of ice cream, and the total number of people, and figures out what proportion each person should get of each ice cream. So if the total chocolate ice cream is 9 scoops, the total vanilla is 12 scoops, and the total strawberry is 15 scoops, IPF can figure out that each person should get 2 scoops of chocolate, 3 scoops of vanilla, and 3 scoops of strawberry. That way everyone gets a fair share.

IPF is used in a lot of different areas, like economics and data analysis. It helps make sure that data is accurate and people get a fair share.
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