ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Point process operation

Okay, so imagine you have a bunch of toys, like blocks and dolls and cars, and you want to play with them in a certain way. But first, you need to put them in the right order, like all the blocks together and all the dolls together and all the cars together.

This is kind of like what a point process operation does, but instead of toys, it's analyzing a bunch of points in space and time. Sometimes you want to group those points together in a certain way to analyze them.

For example, let's say you're studying when birds fly over a certain area. You might have a bunch of data points that show the birds' location and time. But instead of looking at each individual point, you might want to analyze the groups of points that show when a bunch of birds fly together in a flock.

Using a point process operation, you can analyze these groups of points and figure out things like how often flocks occur or how many birds are in a flock on average.

So, in a way, a point process operation is like organizing your toys or analyzing data points by grouping them together in a certain way to make it easier to study and learn from them.