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Why do power laws exist? I have an intuitive understanding of how bell curves fall out of accumulated random events. -Similarly, is there a simple principle causing power laws to appear everywhere? -How can we predict that something will follow a power law distribution?
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Per Bak, Self-Organized Criticality was the old classic on this. They never did find a general result like central limit theorem iirc, only local constitutive laws and mechanisms like preferential attachment. Graphs, sand piles etc all have local explanations. No grand theory.
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I just gave you a ref, the Per Bak book 🙂 Dated and a bit controversial now, but classic. The field basically stagnated after the networks research of ~2000 (Barabasi book is key ref there) Finding power laws was a cottage industry through 90s. Then there was a backlash