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Distribution Of Income And Unrv Posting

M. Porcius Cato

Entry posted by M. Porcius Cato

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I mentioned in a thread on the Gracchan grain dole that the distribution of income is typically best described by a power function (sort of like an exponential/logarithmic curve). You probably have some inking of this distribution if you've ever heard a politician or professor complaining bitterly about the fact the top 1% owns 50% of the wealth (or whatever it is in your local area).

 

However, economists have been pointing out for some time that this power law of income distribution really says nothing about corruption or anything like that: it's simply a consequence of there being a distribution of motivation/merit/opportunity/etc that is applied over the long term.

 

To illustrate this prinicple, I thought I'd check whether the power function also describes the distribution of posts made to UNRV. As you can see in the chart below, the fit of the function is almost perfect!

gallery_998_26_3765.jpg

I thought this was a pretty cool example of economics applied to everyday life.

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Moonlapse

Ok. So the first 20 members ordered by post count, descending? How did you determine the rank data? Sorry if I'm grilling you, this is fairly new to me. Perhaps I learned this long ago, bu its much more interesting now.

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M. Porcius Cato

Ok. So the first 20 members ordered by post count, descending? How did you determine the rank data? Sorry if I'm grilling you, this is fairly new to me. Perhaps I learned this long ago, bu its much more interesting now.

Yes, first 20 members rank ordered by post count. Here is the classic Pareto distribution.

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