Let's say you wanted to find a pebble of sand on the beach that was a certain color of red. Only that color of red counts. If you find that red piece of sand, you get $100,000. If someone finds the red sand, they announce a new color, and the hunt starts over.
Now, lots of people are scouring the beach looking for this. However, you're smart and organize a group. You get a bunch of people together, and draw some squares. You have person 1 look in square 1, person 2 in square 2, etc.
This is how pooled mining works - the pool gives a little square to a miner, and that miner searches through that square. When they've looked for all the grains of sand in their square they pool gives them a new square or if someone finds the red grain somewhere else on the beach, and then the miner says "Ok, now look for the blue sand". The pool is dishing out the squares to each miner.
Now, lots of people are scouring the beach looking for this. However, you're smart and organize a group. You get a bunch of people together, and draw some squares. You have person 1 look in square 1, person 2 in square 2, etc.
This is how pooled mining works - the pool gives a little square to a miner, and that miner searches through that square. When they've looked for all the grains of sand in their square they pool gives them a new square or if someone finds the red grain somewhere else on the beach, and then the miner says "Ok, now look for the blue sand". The pool is dishing out the squares to each miner.
I think that this is a good analogy, but I would modify it slightly to make it more aligned with what is actually happening. I assume that the search area is analogous to the nonce. The modification is that - the beach is so large (think Sahara desert) that the chances of 2 searchers running into each other is almost 0. So the searchers are not given small squares to search, but instead they are free to roam the entire desert randomly on their own.
Free to Roam, Free to Mine
