2016/11/03 by Marcel Ausloos, Roy Cerqueti · 47 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Artificial intelligence #Combinatorics #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis #Computer science #Entropy (arrow of time) #Law #Mathematical economics #Mathematics #Physics #Political science #Power law #Rank (graph theory) #Ranking (information retrieval) #Statistical Mechanics and Entropy #Statistical physics #Statistics #Universal law #Zipf's law #physics.data-an #physics.soc-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0166011
published in PLoS ONE 11(11), e0166011 (Public Library of Science) · 17 pages, 7 figures, 2 Tables, 49 references
openalex publication_date 2016/11/03 · arxiv created 2016/11/05 · arxiv updated 2017/08/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
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.