Completely extracurricularly (although I am in class right now, I’ve just already finished today’s assignment; the class is called Writing in Digital Environments, I figure this is an acceptable use of time), I’ve been reading about Power laws. This is the idea that 20% of the population holds 80% of the wealth, or that 20% of blogs get 80% of the links.
It was actually the latter idea that made me start thinking about Power laws. Unfortunately, I don’t remember where I got link to begin with. Oh well.
But anyway, in the course of my online perusing, I found a New Yorker article by Malcom Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point and Blink; I haven’t read either) about Power laws and social problems.
An illustration:
Between 1986 and 1990, 21% of LAPD officers were responsible for 100% of the “allegations of excessive force or improper tactics”. Of these, 77% of the officers had only 1 or 2 allegations made against them. So only 3% of LAPD officers were responsible for most of the allegations.
The primary focus of Gladwell’s article is on homelessness, and offers some interesting ideas.
Mostly, I think it’s really interesting that our normal mental model of a bell curve might not be as universally applicable as we often think it is.
And there’s the bell. Time to go take a linguistics test.