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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Replying to
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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Do you have any recommended reading material for this? I'm interested in the question - what makes certain domains amenable to power laws vs not.
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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
Replying to
Thanks!
Whoops, my bad. I misinterpreted the first sentence as something completely different. Didn't know Per Bak was the full name.


