George Kingsley Zipf (IPA [zɪf]), (1902-1950), was an American linguist and philologist who studied statistical occurrences in different languages. He is the eponym of Zipf's law, which states that while only a few words are used very often, many or most are used rarely, Symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet as used for English. ... 1902 (MCMII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... 1950 (MCML) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and someone who engages in this study is called a linguist. ... Philology is the study of ancient texts and languages. ... Statistics is a broad mathematical discipline which studies ways to collect, summarize and draw conclusions from data. ... An eponym is a person, whether real or fictitious, whose name has (or is thought to have) given rise to the name of a particular place, tribe, discovery, or other item. ... This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. ...

where P_n is the frequency of a word ranked n^th and ^a is almost 1. This means that the second item occurs approximately 1/2 as often as the first, and the third item 1/3 as often as the first, and so on. [1].

Zipf worked at Harvard University. He worked with the Chinese languages, and much of his effort can explain properties of the Internet and many other collections of data. Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and a member of the Ivy League. ... Chinese (written) language (pinyin: zhōngwén) written in Chinese characters The Chinese language (汉语/漢語, 华语/華語, or 中文; Pinyin: Hànyǔ, Huáyǔ, or Zhōngwén) is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. ... This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. ...

See also

• Benford's law
• Bradford's law
• Lotka's law
• Pareto distribution or Pareto principle or the "80-20 rule"

Benfords law, also called the first-digit law, states that in lists of numbers from many real-life sources of data, the leading digit 1 occurs much more often than the others (namely about 30% of the time). ... Bradfords law is a pattern first described by Samuel C. Bradford in 1934 that estimates the exponentially diminishing returns of extending a library search. ... Lotkas law describes the frequency of publication by authors in a given field. ... The Pareto distribution, named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, is a power law probability distribution found in a large number of real-world situations. ... The so-called Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity) states that for many phenomena 80% of consequences stem from 20% of the causes. ... The misnamed Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 Rule, the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity) states that for many phenomena 80% of consequences stem from 20% of the causes. ...

Bibliography

• Zipf, George Kingsley (1932): Selected Studies of the Principle of Relative Frequency in Language. Cambridge (Mass.).
• Zipf, George Kingsley (1935): The Psycho-Biology of Language. Cambridge (Mass.).
• Zipf, George Kingsley (1941): National unity and disunity
• Zipf, George Kingsley (1949): Human behavior and the principle of least effort

External link

• Notes on G.K. Zipf