ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Meertens number

Okay kiddo, so a Meertens number is a fancy way of saying a special sequence of numbers that appear in a string of numbers. It's named after a person called Peter Meertens who was very interested in these kinds of sequences.

Let's imagine you have a string of numbers like this: 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.

Do you see anything special in that string of numbers? No? Okay, let's look closer.

If we split the numbers into groups of two digits, we can start to see a pattern. The first group is 11, then 12, then 13, and so on.

If we take the difference between the two digits in each group, we get a new sequence of numbers: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1.

And this sequence of numbers is a Meertens number, because it appears in the string of numbers.

So basically, a Meertens number is a sequence of numbers that appears in a string of numbers when you take the difference between the digits in each group. It's named after a guy called Peter Meertens who loved finding these kinds of sequences.