ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Well-behaved statistic

Okay kiddo, so a statistic is like a big number that tells you something about a group of things or people. But sometimes, that number can be tricky or misleading, so we want our statistic to be well-behaved.

Think of it like this - you know how sometimes your little brother or sister can start acting crazy and it makes everyone else upset or confused? That's kind of like a statistic that isn't well-behaved - it's causing problems or confusion.

A well-behaved statistic is one that follows certain rules and makes sense. It's like a good kid who listens to their parents, follows the rules, and doesn't cause any trouble. We want our statistic to be just as well-behaved!

To make sure our statistic is well-behaved, we need to check that it meets certain criteria. We want it to be accurate, meaning it actually tells us what we want to know about the group we're interested in. We also want it to be precise, so it doesn't have a lot of random or unclear information. And we want it to be consistent, which means if we collect the same data again, we should get a similar result.

So basically, a well-behaved statistic is like a good kid who follows the rules, doesn't cause problems, and tells us what we need to know without adding any confusion. Because just like a group of kids, we need our statistics to behave if we want to learn something useful from them!