ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Pointless topology

Hey kiddo! Let me explain to you what pointless topology is.

Suppose you have a climbing wall with different colored holds. When you want to describe how you climb up the wall, you could describe it in terms of the holds or you could describe it in terms of the spaces between the holds. Pointless topology is like describing the climbing wall in terms of the spaces between the holds.

Imagine you have a cake and you want to describe it to someone, you could describe it in terms of the slices or in terms of the spaces between the slices. Pointless topology is like describing the cake in terms of the spaces between the slices.

This area of mathematics studies spaces and their properties, but instead of focusing on the individual points, it looks at how the different spaces or regions interact with each other. So just like we can describe the climbing wall by looking at the spaces between the holds, we can describe a space by looking at how the different regions influence each other.

So, in conclusion, pointless topology is a way of looking at spaces, not based on the points, but based on how the different regions interact with each other.