ELI5-What is entropy?
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Imagine you have a box of toys, and all the toys are mixed up and scattered around inside. When the toys are all jumbled up and you don’t know where each toy is, we can say that the toys are in a state of high entropy.
Now, let’s say you start organizing the toys one by one, putting each toy in its proper place. As you do this, the toys become more ordered and less mixed up. Eventually, when all the toys are neatly organized and you can easily find each one, we can say that the toys are in a state of low entropy.
Entropy is a way to measure how messy or disordered things are. The higher the entropy, the more mixed up and unpredictable things are. But when things are organized and predictable, the entropy is lower.
Entropy can apply to things other than toys too. It can describe how messy a room is, how jumbled up a puzzle is, or how confusing a group of numbers or letters can be. It’s a way to understand how much disorder or randomness there is in the world around us.
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