ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Malfatti circles

Okay kiddo, have you ever heard of circles before? They're round shapes that you might see on balls or coins. Well, imagine if you had three circles that were all touching each other at their edges. That's kind of what a malfatti circle is.

Now, let's say you have these three circles and you have a big piece of paper that they're all sitting on. You can draw three lines, one going from the center of each circle to the center of the circle next to it. These lines will divide the big paper into three sections that look like slices of pizza.

The interesting thing about malfatti circles is that you can actually cut out three smaller circles from these sections of the paper, and they will fit perfectly inside the original three circles. These smaller circles are called malfatti circles.

Why is this important, you might ask? Well, mathematicians have been studying malfatti circles for a long time because of their interesting properties. They're related to things like optimization and geometry, which are very important in fields like engineering and computer science.

So, basically, malfatti circles are these special circles that can be created from three other circles, and they're important because they can help us solve some complicated problems. Cool, huh?