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Related papers: Dynamical approach to Zipf's law

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In the last years, researchers have realized the difficulties of fitting power-law distributions properly. These difficulties are higher in Zipf's systems, due to the discreteness of the variables and to the existence of two representations…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2022-11-29 Alvaro Corral , Isabel Serra , Ramon Ferrer-i-Cancho

Zipf's law is a hallmark of several complex systems with a modular structure, such as books composed by words or genomes composed by genes. In these component systems, Zipf's law describes the empirical power law distribution of component…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2018-12-05 Andrea Mazzolini , Alberto Colliva , Michele Caselle , Matteo Osella

The interaction of all mobile species with their environment hinges on their movement patterns: the places they visit and how frequently they go there. In human society, where the prevalent form of cohabitation is in cities, the highly…

Physics and Society · Physics 2020-02-17 Markus Schläpfer , Michael Szell , Hadrien Salat , Carlo Ratti , Geoffrey B. West

Universality in the behavior of complex systems often reveals itself in the form of scale-invariant distributions that are essentially independent of the details of the microscopic dynamics. A representative paradigm of complex behavior in…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2007-05-23 G. Malescio , N. V. Dokholyan , S. V. Buldyrev , H. Eugene Stanley

In this article, the relationship between two well-accepted empirical propositions regarding the distribution of population in cities, namely, Gibrat's law and Zipf's law, are rigorously examined using the Chinese census data. Our findings…

Physics and Society · Physics 2010-01-07 Kausik Gangopadhyay , B. Basu

We report about universality of rank-integration distributions of open spaces in city space syntax similar to the famous rank-size distributions of cities (Zipf's law). We also demonstrate that the degree of choice an open space represents…

Physics and Society · Physics 2009-11-13 D. Volchenkov , Ph. Blanchard

We introduce a simple and generic model that reproduces Zipf's law. By regarding the time evolution of the model as a random walk in the logarithmic scale, we explain theoretically why this model reproduces Zipf's law. The explanation shows…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2009-11-07 Kenji Kawamura , Naomichi Hatano

We study a deliberately simple, fully non-linguistic model of text: a sequence of independent draws from a finite alphabet of letters plus a single space symbol. A word is defined as a maximal block of non-space symbols. Within this…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-11-25 Vladimir Berman

The spatial distribution of people exhibits clustering across a wide range of scales, from household ($\sim 10^{-2}$ km) to continental ($\sim 10^4$ km) scales. Empirical data indicates simple power-law scalings for the size distribution of…

Physics and Society · Physics 2016-03-23 Henry W. Lin , Abraham Loeb

Zipf's law states that the frequency of an observation with a given value is inversely proportional to the square of that value; Taylor's law, instead, describes the scaling between fluctuations in the size of a population and its mean.…

Physics and Society · Physics 2018-09-26 Charlotte James , Sandro Azaele , Amos Maritan , Filippo Simini

We study a resource utilization scenario characterized by intrinsic fitness. To describe the growth and organization of different cities, we consider a model for resource utilization where many restaurants compete, as in a game, to attract…

Physics and Society · Physics 2014-10-28 Asim Ghosh , Arnab Chatterjee , Anindya S. Chakrabarti , Bikas K Chakrabarti

Fractals, 1/f noise, Zipf's law, and the occurrence of large catastrophic events are typical ubiquitous general empirical observations across the individual sciences which cannot be understood within the set of references developed within…

Physics and Society · Physics 2018-12-21 Yanguang Chen

Background: Zipf's law and Heaps' law are two representatives of the scaling concepts, which play a significant role in the study of complexity science. The coexistence of the Zipf's law and the Heaps' law motivates different understandings…

Physics and Society · Physics 2011-05-26 Lin Wang , Xiang Li , Yi-Qing Zhang , Yan Zhang , Kan Zhang

Zipf's, Heaps' and Taylor's laws are ubiquitous in many different systems where innovation processes are at play. Together, they represent a compelling set of stylized facts regarding the overall statistics, the innovation rate and the…

Physics and Society · Physics 2018-11-14 Francesca Tria , Vittorio Loreto , Vito D. P. Servedio

Zipf's law is one the most conspicuous empirical facts for cities, however, there is no convincing explanation for the scaling relation between rank and size and its scaling exponent. Based on the idea from general fractals and scaling,…

Physics and Society · Physics 2018-12-20 Yanguang Chen

The spatial heterogeneity of cities -- the uneven distribution of population and activities -- is fundamental to urban dynamics and related to critical issues such as infrastructure overload, housing affordability, and social inequality.…

Physics and Society · Physics 2025-11-14 Hao Huang , Yuming Lin , Jiazhen Liu

Statistical regularities in human language have fascinated researchers for decades, suggesting deep underlying principles governing its evolution and information structuring for efficient communication. While Zipf's Law describes the…

Physics and Society · Physics 2025-04-29 Alessandro Bellina , Vito D. P. Servedio

The Zipf's law is the major regularity of statistical linguistics that served as a prototype for rank-frequency relations and scaling laws in natural sciences. Here we show that the Zipf's law -- together with its applicability for a single…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2015-06-15 Armen E. Allahverdyan , Weibing Deng , Q. A. Wang

This chapter is about Complexity and Spatial Dynamics in Urban Systems. Strong inequalities in the size of cities and the apparent difficulty of limiting their growth raise practical issues for spatial planning. At a time when new…

Physics and Society · Physics 2020-10-29 Juste Raimbault , Denise Pumain

Time evolution of the cities and of the languages is considered in terms of multiplicative noise and fragmentation processes; where power law (Pareto-Zipf law) and slightly asymmetric log-normal (Gauss) distribution result for the size…

Physics and Society · Physics 2009-11-13 C. Tuncay