(Read the text in the notes panel at the bottom for narration)

A problem with the Long Tail

(Although an amazing number of

things are powerlaws, a lot of things
aren’t. How can you tell the
difference?)
 A powerlaw
100

90

80

70
Sales ($)

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Products
 Shown another way
100
Sales ($)

10

1
1 10 100

Products
WTF?
The Missing Market
Source: Morris Rosenthal
The problem
Examples of phenomena that follow
powerlaw distributions
• Species distribution among plants
• Square footage of Alaskan Inuit homes
• Forest fires, by size
• Cities, by population
• Death toll in wars
• Earthquakes
• Word use
• Number of papers published by scientists
Examples of phenomena that follow
lognormal distributions
• Concentration of elements in the earth's
crust
• Latent periods of infectious diseases
• Survival times after cancer diagnosis
• Distribution of chemicals in the environment
(including pollution)
• Species distribution among moths and
diatoms
• Crystals in ice cream
• Length of words in spoken conversation
 What’s the difference?
Powerlaws: created by “preferential
attachment” in scale-free networks.
Lognormal distributions: created by
"proportionate effects" (like growing by a
proportion of your weight).
 Question

Assuming it all comes down to network

effects, how can you predict whether the
“natural shape” (free of bottlenecks and
other scarcity distortions) is a powerlaw or a
lognormal distribution?