ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

L2 norm

Let's pretend that you have a big pile of your favorite toys, and you want to know how many toys you have in total. You could just count them one by one, but that would take a long time if you have a lot of toys. So instead, you decide to use something called the "l2 norm."

The l2 norm is a way to measure the length or size of something. In this case, you want to measure the size of your toy pile. You start by counting how many of each toy you have (for example, 5 dolls, 3 balls, 2 trucks, and so on). Then, you square each of those numbers (so 5 becomes 25, 3 becomes 9, 2 becomes 4, and so on).

Next, you add up all of those squared numbers, and take the square root of the result. This gives you the l2 norm of your toy pile! It's like a special number that tells you how big your toy pile is without having to count each individual toy.

So why is the l2 norm useful? Well, it can be used in lots of different situations where you want to measure the "size" or "distance" between things. For example, if you're analyzing data and you want to see how different data points compare to each other, you can use the l2 norm to get a sense of how far apart they are.

The l2 norm may sound complicated, but it's really just a way of measuring things in a consistent and standardized way. And with a little bit of practice, even a five-year-old can use it to size up their toy collection!