1. The Rank-Frequency Form of Zipf's Law.
- Author
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Hill, Bruce M.
- Subjects
- *
MATHEMATICAL statistics , *ZIPF'S law , *DISTRIBUTION (Probability theory) , *STATISTICAL linguistics , *BOSE-Einstein condensation , *CHARACTERISTIC functions , *MATHEMATICAL linguistics , *STATISTICS - Abstract
Suppose that there are K regions in a country, with N[sub I] people and M, cities in the ith region. Let N[sub iota] be large, M[sub iota] random, given N[sub iota], and such that the distribution of M[sub I]N[sup -1, sub I], given N[sub I], converges to a limiting distribution F, with F(X) Is similar to Cx[sup gamma] as x arrow right 0, gamma > 0. Let L[sup (r)] be the size of the rth largest city in the country. If, given M[sub iota] and N[sub I], there is a Bose-Einstein allocation of the N[sub iota] people to the M[sub iota] cities in region I, independently for the various regions, then a plot of L[sup (r)] against r will be approximately proportional to r[sup -(1+alpha)], for 1 + alpha = gamma[sup -1]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 1974
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