When the probability of measuring a particular value
of some quantity varies inversely as a power of that
value, the quantity is said to follow a power law, also
known variously as Zipf's law or the Pareto
distribution. Power laws appear widely in physics,
biology, earth and planetary sciences, economics and
finance, computer science, demography and the social
sciences. For instance, the distributions of the sizes
of cities, earthquakes, solar flares, moon craters,
wars and people's personal fortunes all appear to
follow power laws. The origin of power-law behaviour
has been a topic of debate in the scientific community
for more than a century. Here we review some of the
empirical evidence for the existence of power-law forms
and the theories proposed to explain them.
%0 Unpublished Work
%1 Newman2005
%A Newman, M. E. J.
%D 2005
%K imported
%T Power laws, Pareto distributions and Zipf's law
%X When the probability of measuring a particular value
of some quantity varies inversely as a power of that
value, the quantity is said to follow a power law, also
known variously as Zipf's law or the Pareto
distribution. Power laws appear widely in physics,
biology, earth and planetary sciences, economics and
finance, computer science, demography and the social
sciences. For instance, the distributions of the sizes
of cities, earthquakes, solar flares, moon craters,
wars and people's personal fortunes all appear to
follow power laws. The origin of power-law behaviour
has been a topic of debate in the scientific community
for more than a century. Here we review some of the
empirical evidence for the existence of power-law forms
and the theories proposed to explain them.
@unpublished{Newman2005,
abstract = {When the probability of measuring a particular value
of some quantity varies inversely as a power of that
value, the quantity is said to follow a power law, also
known variously as Zipf's law or the Pareto
distribution. Power laws appear widely in physics,
biology, earth and planetary sciences, economics and
finance, computer science, demography and the social
sciences. For instance, the distributions of the sizes
of cities, earthquakes, solar flares, moon craters,
wars and people's personal fortunes all appear to
follow power laws. The origin of power-law behaviour
has been a topic of debate in the scientific community
for more than a century. Here we review some of the
empirical evidence for the existence of power-law forms
and the theories proposed to explain them.},
added-at = {2007-06-26T15:08:05.000+0200},
author = {Newman, M. E. J.},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/22c0c83deaf21315478546af73445f2b8/gilles.daniel},
comment = {Excellent introduction to power-laws, and how to
measure them},
interhash = {7539b701d6df3fb9a90b0ff70a32bfe9},
intrahash = {2c0c83deaf21315478546af73445f2b8},
keywords = {imported},
note = {Working paper},
timestamp = {2007-06-26T15:08:12.000+0200},
title = {Power laws, Pareto distributions and Zipf's law},
year = 2005
}