ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Mutually exclusive events

Imagine you have two toys, a red ball and a blue teddy bear. You can only choose one toy to play with at a time. If you choose the red ball, you can't play with the blue teddy bear at the same time because they are different toys. These toys are mutually exclusive, which means they can't happen at the same time.

In the same way, when we talk about events, we say they are mutually exclusive if they can't happen at the same time. For example, if you flip a coin, the possible outcomes are either heads or tails. Heads and tails are also mutually exclusive because both outcomes can't happen at the same time. If one happens, the other can't.

Another example would be rolling a dice. You can only get one number on the dice, say, the number 5. You can't get two different numbers at the same time, like a 5 and a 3. This means that getting a 5 is mutually exclusive from getting any other number on the dice.

So, in simpler terms, mutually exclusive means that two or more things can't happen at the same time. They are like different toys, and we can only choose one to play with at a time.