ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Lubell–Yamamoto–Meshalkin inequality

The lubell-yamamoto-meshalkin inequality is like a rule that tells us that when we have a set of boxes or items, and we want to divide them up evenly between some people, we need to make sure that each person only takes a certain amount of items. It's kind of like making sure that everyone gets an equal share of the goodies.

This rule says that if we have n boxes or items, and we want to divide them up among k people, we can do it in a way that makes sure that no one person takes more than log2(n/k) boxes.

Now, that might sound complicated, so let's break it down a bit.

"n" is the number of boxes or items we have.

"k" is the number of people we want to divide them up between.

"log2" is just a fancy way of saying "logarithm base 2". This is a way of measuring how many times we can divide a number by 2 before we get to 1. For example, log2(8) = 3, because we can divide 8 by 2 three times to get 1 (8/2=4, 4/2=2, 2/2=1).

So, if we want to divide up n boxes or items between k people, we can make sure that no one person takes more than log2(n/k) boxes. This helps us make sure that everyone gets a fair share.

Overall, the lubell-yamamoto-meshalkin inequality is a way of making sure that when we divide things up between people, we do it in a way that's fair and even.