Star height

Imagine you are drawing a line on a piece of paper. Now imagine you draw another line that is twice as long as the first line, but starts at the same point. If you keep doing this, drawing lines that are twice as long and all start at the same point, you will eventually create a shape that looks like a star.

The star height refers to how many times you have to double the length of the line before the shape looks like a star. So if you only draw two lines, you won't have enough to create a star and the star height would be zero. But if you draw five or six lines, you'll have enough to create a star and the star height would be five or six.

In math, we use this idea of star height to help us understand and compare different types of languages. A language is a set of words that follow certain rules, just like how drawing lines can follow certain rules to create a star. Some languages are more complicated than others, and we can use star height to measure that complexity.