ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Strong law of small numbers

The strong law of small numbers is a funny way of saying something that happens when we look at small groups of things.

Imagine you have 10 jelly beans, and you want to split them up into two groups of 5. You might think that each group would have exactly 5 jelly beans, right? Well, sometimes that's not true.

The strong law of small numbers tells us that when we're working with small groups of things, the results can be a little unpredictable. Sometimes, one group might have more than the other, even if we tried to split them up evenly.

This happens because when we're working with small numbers, there's a lot of chance involved. We can't be sure that everything will be exactly even - sometimes things will turn out a bit lopsided.

It's kind of like rolling a die. If you roll it once, you might get a 6. But if you roll it a bunch of times, eventually you'll get an even number of 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, and 6s - that's just how probability works.

So the strong law of small numbers is just a way of reminding us that when we're working with small groups of things, we shouldn't be too surprised if things turn out a bit wonky - that's just how chance works!