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Power law

Functional relationship between two quantities / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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In statistics, a power law is a functional relationship between two quantities, where a relative change in one quantity results in a relative change in the other quantity proportional to a power of the change, independent of the initial size of those quantities: one quantity varies as a power of another. For instance, considering the area of a square in terms of the length of its side, if the length is doubled, the area is multiplied by a factor of four.[1] The rate of change exhibited in these relationships is said to be multiplicative.

Long_tail.svg
An example power-law graph that demonstrates ranking of popularity. To the right is the long tail, and to the left are the few that dominate (also known as the 80–20 rule).