ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Product integral

A product integral is like a special way of multiplying numbers together. Imagine if you had a long line of numbers, and you wanted to multiply all of them together. With normal multiplication, you would just keep multiplying the numbers until you got the final answer.

But with a product integral, instead of multiplying all the numbers together one by one, you would squish them all together into one long "thing" called an expression. You might be thinking, "What's an expression??" Well, an expression is like a fancy way of writing a formula or equation.

So, you would write out your long line of numbers as an expression, and then you would use the product integral to find the final answer. The product integral uses calculus, which is a type of math that helps you figure out how things change over time.

To use the product integral, you would take your expression and break it up into very tiny pieces. Then, you would use calculus to figure out the "area" of all those tiny pieces put together. This area would give you the final answer - it's like you're discovering the product of all those numbers in a more precise way.

So, to review: a product integral is a special way of multiplying numbers together by squishing them into one expression and using calculus to find the final answer. It's like you're discovering the product of all the numbers in a more fancy and precise way!