Let's try another comparison. Considering it's referenced as "mining" for similarities in proof of work, we will stick to that analogy. It's also more of an overall analogy of mining than just the 5Nd but I had fun so......

****NOTE: There may be some references to diff that I mixed up, so someone sort through this insane scenario if necessary.

You show up to Kano's job site looking to mine for some gold with the others in this pool. You READ THE RULES and notice nobody gets paid until a golden block is found. Maybe you're brand new, maybe you have equipment from another job site, either way some of these guys have some massive machinery and are hashing away rock and what not looking for a hidden block of gold.

work/shifts: You set your equipment up however powerful (since we're painting mental pictures, say you've got 10 TH/s) start hashing away looking for gold with the work you've been given. All that rock goes onto a conveyor belt so it can be measured and verified how much material (shares) you actually did versus how much sand/dirt was rejected. As you are mining and loading the conveyor belt, the material (shares) is being counted and split up into shifts of 50 minutes or less to keep track of the average work you've done. Your mining equipment's work rate (hash rate) is measured by how how much material (shares) you can load onto the conveyor in retrospect to the difficulty in moving the material and the conveyor speed .

luck:Meanwhile, the pool is exchanging dump truck loads of new rock material to mine on about every 30 seconds that it needs to move to the conveyor in order to try and find a hidden golden block. The miners expect to find a golden block within a certain amount of time & material moved as a work goal. If the pool finds a golden block in the expected amount of work/time then they were 100% on track for payday. The hope is that they can process enough material that they will likely find a golden block. There is no guarantee that the material will be enough to find a golden block and payday may be delayed. The more paydays occur closer to their target, the closer to 100% the average paydays work out to be. The more material than can be processed, the higher the odds of an on-time or even early payday. _{On occasion, Bob's wife sends him with chicken for lunch which increases the morale of the miners and significantly increases the luck of the pool. Furthermore, when a golden block is found, ritualistic dancing and praising of chicken often lures a golden block out from hiding much earlier than expected. This is great luck and sometimes triggers an overwhelming response to make amends amongst feuding crew members suffering from block withdrawals due to an earlier streak of bad luck.}


5Nd/ramp: After a couple days of complaining you're not getting paid because nobody has found a golden block yet, one of the miners finds a block of gold and everyone cheers. Finally, this is payout is gonna be NICE! You check your rewards to see your payment and say "WHAT THE HELL?! This Kano guy is ripping me off" to which the rest of the pool's miners say "Whoa there, bud. Our dear Kano is NOT ripping you off." The miner cries out that he has been mining away at a rate of 10 TH/s for 2 days now and got a low payout for all of his work. "Yes, that's the PPLNS system in full effect, brotha." You scratch your head and say "But why is my paycheck so much smaller than my last job where I was getting paid several times a day?" By this time you grabbed the attention of a few veteran miners who try to explain to you that everything works out or they wouldn't be here and to just keep working. They assure you this is the best pool with several members inviting your questions and the pool operator himself, Kano, stays active with letting everyone know what's going and sharing his knowledge. They try to explain, but you still can't get passed that small payment you feel was wasted away for nothing.

So, what about all that material you mined? Though you submitted your material to the conveyor and it was accounted for, it does not get included in the very next paycheck. Instead, the conveyor is moving the material to the pools storage facility and the reward is being calculated down the conveyor line. It starts from the last block found and keeps tallying those shift averages (total shares during a shift) until the total difficulty it took to process the material (shares) adds up to 5 times worth the difficulty of all total golden block mining operations with the idea of a 100% targeted golden block paycheck and is then divided by 5 ( or simply 1/5) of that as a means to average the swings. This way if your conveyor belt has patches of no material or a reduced amount of material, you won't miss out on your paycheck as it will be averaged with your other shares by multiplying 5 times worth then dividing by 5 for an average. It also prevents a new miner from pulling up next to you and your conveyor and only processing a few shifts worth at the same rate but getting the same paycheck as you without sharing his damn chicken even.