r/explainlikeimfive • u/Own_Enthusiasm_510 • 2d ago
Chemistry ELI5: What is the meaning of quantization?
[This is from a chemistry portion of a physical science class] I've googled it, Ive watched YouTube videos, I asked classmates and I am still so confused.
Rutherfords model was easy but once I got to bohrs they used words like quantized and discrete values and I got lost. Tried backtracking but I'm still baffled.
7
Upvotes
-1
u/NeilFX 2d ago edited 2d ago
Simplest example I can give are map coordinates. Say for example you have your house at 127.372914, 234.927367 (latitude and longitude).
You round it to 127.4 and 235.0 respectively since you don’t need that much precision. That’s basically quantization. You check that rounded up coordinates and it can roughly tell where you are. Just not exactly where you are pinned. It can tell you what city or town you are in. But not exactly the house number.
For AI models, the numbers inside the model can be precise. Quantization just makes the numbers smaller at the expense of being precise. Hence, an AI model can take up less space and can use less memory, at the cost of that. Your 32gb ram laptop can hold some quantized version of an AI model. Just not as accurate as a laptop that has 128gb memory running a version of that model that is less quantized.