Skip to main content

Astronomy (thesaurus)

Search from vocabulary

Concept information

Preferred term

Pareto distribution  

Definition

  • The Pareto distribution, named after the Italian civil engineer, economist, and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, is a power-law probability distribution that is used in description of social, quality control, scientific, geophysical, actuarial, and many other types of observable phenomena; the principle originally applied to describing the distribution of wealth in a society, fitting the trend that a large portion of wealth is held by a small fraction of the population. The Pareto principle or "80-20 rule" stating that 80% of outcomes are due to 20% of causes was named in honour of Pareto, but the concepts are distinct, and only Pareto distributions with shape value (α) of log45 ≈ 1.16 precisely reflect it. Empirical observation has shown that this 80-20 distribution fits a wide range of cases, including natural phenomena and human activities. (Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution)

In other languages

URI

http://data.loterre.fr/ark:/67375/MDL-PF1T2NW8-R

Download this concept: