ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Quiver (mathematics)

Imagine you have a collection of stickers or small toys and you want to organize them in groups, kind of like how you might sort your toys by color or type. A quiver is like a way of organizing mathematical information into groups, too.

In math, a quiver is a diagram that helps show how different things are connected to each other. The things in a quiver might be numbers, variables, or more complicated mathematical objects, but they're connected by arrows that show how one thing leads into another.

You might draw a quiver to show the different steps in a math problem, or to show how different solutions to a problem can connect to each other. The arrows in a quiver can go in different directions, too, so you can show when one thing affects another thing versus when they affect each other equally.

Overall, a quiver is a way of showing relationships between different mathematical objects. It's a tool that can help make complex math problems easier to understand by breaking them down into smaller pieces and showing how all of the pieces fit together.