ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Quantile regression averaging

Quantile regression averaging is when we use a method to find the average of the different possible lines that could be drawn through a set of points on a graph.

Think of it like drawing a line through a bunch of dots on a piece of paper. If you drew just one line, it might not pass through all the points, or it might go too far above or below some of them. But if you could draw many different lines and choose the one that was closest to most of the points, you would have a better idea of the overall trend.

Quantile regression averaging does something similar, but instead of finding just one line, it finds a bunch of lines, then calculates the average of all those lines. This can be really helpful, because it means we're not just relying on one line to tell us the trend. Instead, we're looking at all the different possible lines and figuring out which one seems to fit the data best overall.

This is especially useful when we're looking at data that doesn't fit a very clear pattern. For example, if we were looking at how much money people spend on groceries based on their income, we might find that there's a lot of variation in the data. Some people with low incomes might spend a lot on groceries, while others with high incomes might spend very little. Rather than trying to draw one line through all these points, we could use quantile regression averaging to find the average of many different lines, and get a better idea of the overall trend.