ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

McKay conjecture

Ok, so imagine you're building a really big castle with thousands of rooms. You want to know how many ways there are to color the walls in each room using just two colors, let's say red and blue.

This is where the McKay Conjecture comes in. Scientists and mathematicians created a rule to help figure out the answer to this big castle problem. They said that there's a certain type of mathematical object called a "group" that can help you calculate how many ways there are to color the rooms.

But then they wondered, is there a pattern to how these groups work? Can we predict what the answer will be without having to count every single room in every single castle? That's where the McKay Conjecture came in.

The McKay Conjecture says that there is a connection between the groups and the colors of the castle walls. It's like a secret code that tells you how many different colors there can be based on the group. It's a really important idea in math because it helps us solve big problems without having to do all the work ourselves.