ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Plot drift

Okay, so let's imagine that you have a toy car and you want to race it on a track. You start by placing the car on the track and steering it in the right direction. As the car moves, you might notice that it doesn't always go exactly where you want it to go. Sometimes it drifts a little to the left or right.

The same thing can happen when scientists are trying to track something in a graph. They have a line that represents where they think things should be going, but sometimes the line can drift away from where it's supposed to be. This is called plot drift.

It's like if you were drawing a picture and you made a mistake that caused the picture to look a little different from what you had in mind. In the same way, plot drift means that the picture you're getting from the data you're collecting doesn't match up exactly with what you thought you'd see.

Scientists have to be very careful to watch for plot drift when they're doing experiments or collecting data. If they don't catch it, they might end up drawing the wrong conclusions and coming to the wrong ideas about how things work. So, they keep an eye on the graph to make sure it's not drifting too far from where it should be.