Reed WJ "The Pareto, Zipf and other power laws" ECONOMICS LETTERS 74 (1): 15-19 DEC 20 2001

[charles h. davis]

Thanks for the reply.  Yes, when I alluded to "appeal to authority" I was
talking about what Derek Price long ago called cumulative advantage.
During a conversation in 1979 he said something about "throwing out data
points" that didn't match a regular exponential curve.  That got me
thinking about whether those points (highly cited individuals -- like
the highly acknowledged people) might have fit along a power curve.  Alas,
Derek has been dead for some time, and I have nothing in writing.

Chas.

On Wed, 20 Mar 2002, David G. Post wrote:

> Charles
> I'm very interested in power law patterns as well -- I took a (very
> preliminary) look for power law behavior in legal citations (citations
> to prior cases, as opposed to citations in the law review literature) in
> David Post and Michael Eisen, How Long is the Coastline of the
> Law?  Thoughts on the Fractal Nature of Legal Systems, 29 Journal of
> Legal Studies 545 (2000)
> URL:  http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/fractals.pdf
>
> when you write:
> >Sociologically, we may be underestimating something like "appeal to
> >authority" in our interactions with colleagues, peers, and mentors.
>
> are you referring to the idea that 'rich-get-richer' phenomena produce
> power law distributions?
> David Post
>
> ************************************
> David G. Post     Temple University Law School
> Postd at erols.com
> 215-204-4539 or 202-364-5010
> http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/writings.html
> http://www.icannwatch.org
> *********************************************************************
>
>
> At 02:48 PM 3/20/02 -0500, charles h. davis wrote:
> >As usual, I appreciate Gene's selective dissemination of information.
> >This particular issue (power curves) has been a concern of mine for some
> >time, and I'd like others to comment on it (please).
> >
> >Specifically, there is a major difference between
> >
> >         y=ae**bx (exponential)
> >
> >         and
> >
> >         y=ax**b (power)
> >
> >Aside from the mathematics, there may be sociological implications.  When
> >Blaise Cronin and I looked at acknowledgements as opposed to citations, we
> >found that there was a true power curve -- not a "simple" citation-like
> >exponential distribution.
> >
> >[Davis, Charles H. and Blaise Cronin, "Acknowledgments and Intellectual
> >Indebtedness: A Bibliometric Conjecture," Journal of the American Society
> >for Information Science 44(10):590-592 (December 1993).]
> >
> >Sociologically, we may be underestimating something like "appeal to
> >authority" in our interactions with colleagues, peers, and mentors.
> >
> >Cordially,
> >
> >Charles Davis
> >==========================================================
> >Senior Fellow, SLIS, Indiana University
> >(812) 331-1322  Fax: (812) 855-6166
> >php.indiana.edu/~davisc/
> >==========================================================