ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Vuong's closeness test

Vuong's closeness test is a way to tell if two different groups of things are actually pretty similar to each other, or if they're really different.

Imagine you have two baskets of different colored balls. One basket has mostly red balls, and the other basket has mostly blue balls. You want to know if these two groups of balls are similar or different from each other.

To use Vuong's closeness test, you would first look at the average (or mean) of each group. The mean is kind of like finding the middle of all the numbers. For example, if you have the numbers 3, 5, and 7, the mean would be 5 because it's in the middle.

Once you find the mean of each group of balls, you would also look at the spread or the range of the numbers. If a group has a bigger range, that means there is more variation in the numbers. For example, if you have the numbers 1, 2, 8, and 9, the range would be 8 because that's the difference between the highest and lowest numbers.

Now, with Vuong's closeness test, you would take these mean and range values and put them into a math formula that will tell you if the two groups are close or not. If the result is a small number, that means they're pretty close to each other. If the result is a big number, that means they're really different from each other.

So in our example with the baskets of red and blue balls, you might find that the mean of the red balls is 6, and the mean of the blue balls is 5.5. The range of the red balls might be 3, and the range of the blue balls might be 2. You would put these values into the formula, and if the result is small, that means the two groups are pretty similar. If the result is big, that means they're really different from each other.

Overall, Vuong's closeness test is just a way to use math to help you figure out if things are similar or different from each other. By looking at the mean and range of different groups, you can use the formula to get a better understanding of how close or far apart they really are.