It shows up when choosing things. Most people will choose the largest, some will choose the next largest, etc. I might be wrong, of course.
Comment on I reckon this is the usage distribution of Lemmy servers that we'll end up with.
queermunist@lemmy.ml 1 week agoOkay, based on that article Zipf’s law seems to mostly apply to languages. Cities, for example, don’t follow it.
HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
naught101@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Zipf’s law is just a specific example of a power law. Other power laws exist for lots of different things, just with different exponents.
the jury seems out about cities. This paper suggests they don’t follow a other distributions: www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0264275124002592 , but this one suggests that they do: www.oecd.org/content/dam/…/5k3tt100wf7j-en.pdf - specifically it suggests they DO follow Zipf’s law, within a given country. Inter-country differences are likely due to different developmental trajectories over time.