In the given CDC 2018 diabetes data, we discovered that how your weight (BMI) affects your chances of getting diabetes depends on your age. It’s kind of like BMI has a different role for younger and older people. Instead of using straight lines, we might have to use curvy lines when looking at the data. We use special math to handle these curvy lines. When the relationship between factors like your weight and diabetes isn’t a straight line, we need to use math that fits the curves to make it simpler to understand. We use step functions to catch these quick jumps, like when a signifiant increase in exercise suddenly has a big impact on risk.