Normalization in plain English

Question

I understand the concept of database normalization, but always have a hard time explaining it in plain English - especially for a job interview. I have read the wikipedia p

Answer 1

This is what I ask interviewees:

Why don't we use a single table for an application instead of using multiple tables ?

The answer is ofcourse normalization. As already said, its to avoid redundancy and there by update anomalies.