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

I've read the wiki links on normalization many times but I have found a better overview of normalization from this article. It is a simple easy to understand explanation of normalization up to fourth normal form. Give it a read!

Preview:

What is Normalization?

Normalization is the process of efficiently organizing data in a database. There are two goals of the normalization process: eliminating redundant data (for example, storing the same data in more than one table) and ensuring data dependencies make sense (only storing related data in a table). Both of these are worthy goals as they reduce the amount of space a database consumes and ensure that data is logically stored.

http://databases.about.com/od/specificproducts/a/normalization.htm