ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Permutation pattern

Imagine you have five different colored toys, each with a different shape (such as a red block, green ball, yellow triangle, blue star, and purple circle). You can put these five toys in any order you want, like making a line of toys. This order is called a permutation of the toys.

A permutation pattern is like a set of rules that you can use to check if certain toys are in a specific order. For example, let's say you want to check if the red block comes before the green ball in the line of toys. The permutation pattern for this would be "1234", where 1 represents the position of the red block and 2 represents the position of the green ball. If you find a line of toys that matches the pattern "1234", then you know the red block is before the green ball.

But permutation patterns can be more complicated than just two toys in a certain order. You could have a pattern like "24153", where the numbers represent the positions of the toys in the line. This pattern means that the second toy in the line must come before the fourth toy, and the fifth toy must come after the third toy.

Permutation patterns are useful for solving problems in all sorts of fields, like computer science, mathematics, and biology. By understanding permutations and permutation patterns, we can better understand how things can be ordered and how to solve problems that involve ordering.