A Universal Rank-Size Law.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27812192.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0166011 and PMC identifier 5094590.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
A mere hyperbolic law, like the Zipf's law power function, is often inadequate to describe rank-size relationships. An alternative theoretical distribution is proposed based on theoretical physics arguments starting from the Yule-Simon distribution. A modeling is proposed leading to a universal form. A theoretical suggestion for the "best (or optimal) distribution", is provided through an entropy argument. The ranking of areas through the number of cities in various countries and some sport competition ranking serves for the present illustrations.
Medical subject headings
- Models, Theoretical
- Physics