Lotka's law (original) (raw)

NIST

(definition)

**Definition:**The number of authors making n contributions is about 1/na of those making one contribution, where a is often nearly 2.

See also Zipf's law, Benford's law, Bradford's law.

Note: A power law; often nearly an inverse square law.

Contributed by Christiane Fritze h0444who@rz.hu-berlin.de July 2000.

Author: PEB

More information

A short biography of Alfred James Lotka.

Alfred J. Lotka, The Frequency Distribution of Scientific Productivity, Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, 16(12):317-323, 1926.

Go to theDictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures home page.

If you have suggestions, corrections, or comments, please get in touch with Paul Black.

Entry modified 17 December 2004.
HTML page formatted Wed Oct 30 12:15:30 2024.

Cite this as:
Paul E. Black, "Lotka's law", inDictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures [online], Paul E. Black, ed. 17 December 2004. (accessed TODAY) Available from: https://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/lotkaslaw.html