Facultatea de Fizică
Universitatea "Al.I.Cuza" Iaşi
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| Titlu: Power law distributions in socioeconomic systems |
| Autori: Mircea Gligor1, Liliana Gligor2 |
| Afiliere: 1National College „Roman Voda” Roman, 5550 Neamt
2High School “V. Alecsandri” Sabaoani, 5550 Neamt |
| Abstract: Many of the things measured by the scientists have a
typical size or “scale” - a typical value around which
individual measurements are centred. A simple example
would be the heights of human beings. Most adult human
beings are about 180cm tall. There is some variation
around this figure, notably depending on sex, but we
never see people who are 10cm tall, or 500cm. To make
this observation more quantitative, let us plot a
distribution of people’s heights. In Fig.1 one can see the
heights in centimetres of adult men in a sample of
381000 adult males [1], and indeed the distribution is
relatively narrow and peaked around 180cm. Another
telling observation is the ratio of the heights of the tallest
and shortest people. The Guinness Book of Records
claims the world’s tallest and shortest adult men (both
now dead) as having had heights 272cm and 57cm
respectively, making the ratio 4.8. This is a relatively low
value; as we will see in a moment, some other quantities
have much higher ratios of largest to smallest. |
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