The black swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb [Nassim Nicholas Taleb]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Roman
ISBN: 9780812973815
Published: 2010-09-15T21:03:54+00:00
Lingua Franca
The theory of preferential attachment is ubiquitous in its applications: it can explain why city size is from Extremistan, why vocabulary is concentrated among a small number of words, or why bacteria populations can vary hugely in size.
The scientists J. C. Willis and G. U. Yule published a landmark paper in Nature in 1922 called âSome Statistics of Evolution and Geographical Distribution in Plants and Animals, and Their Significance.â Willis and Yule noted the presence in biology of the so-called power laws, atractable versions of the scalable randomness that I discussed in Chapter 3. These power laws (on which more technical information in the following chapters) had been noticed earlier by Vilfredo Pareto, who found that they applied to the distribution of income. Later, Yule presented a simple model showing how power laws can be generated. His point was as follows: Letâs say species split in two at some constant rate, so that new species arise. The richer in species a genus is, the richer it will tend to get, with the same logic as the Mathew effect. Note the following caveat: in Yuleâs model the species never die out.
During the 1940s, a Harvard linguist, George Zipf, examined the properties of language and came up with an empirical regularity now known as Zipfâs law, which, of course, is not a law (and if it were, it would not be Zipfâs). It is just another way to think about the process of inequality. The mechanisms he described were as follows: the more you use a word, the less effortful you will find it to use that word again, so you borrow words from your private dictionary in proportion to their past use. This explains why out of the sixty thousand main words in English, only a few hundred constitute the bulk of what is used in writings, and even fewer appear regularly in conversation. Likewise, the more people aggregate in a particular city, the more likely a stranger will be to pick that city as his destination. The big get bigger and the small stay small, or get relatively smaller.
A great illustration of preferential attachment can be seen in the mushrooming use of English as a lingua francaâthough not for its intrinsic qualities, but because people need to use one single language, or stick to one as much as possible, when they are having a conversation. So whatever language appears to have the upper hand will suddenly draw people in droves; its usage will spread like an epidemic, and other languages will be rapidly dislodged. I am often amazed to listen to conversations between people from two neighboring countries, say, between a Turk and an Iranian, or a Lebanese and a Cypriot, communicating in bad English, moving their hands for emphasis, searching for these words that come out of their throats at the cost of great physical effort. Even members of the Swiss Army use English (not French) as a lingua franca (it would be fun to listen). Consider that
Download
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
Biomathematics | Differential Equations |
Game Theory | Graph Theory |
Linear Programming | Probability & Statistics |
Statistics | Stochastic Modeling |
Vector Analysis |
Modelling of Convective Heat and Mass Transfer in Rotating Flows by Igor V. Shevchuk(6211)
Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil(5793)
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling(4462)
Descartes' Error by Antonio Damasio(3144)
A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra) by Barbara Oakley(3086)
Factfulness_Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World_and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling(3030)
TCP IP by Todd Lammle(2988)
Applied Predictive Modeling by Max Kuhn & Kjell Johnson(2879)
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb(2838)
The Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry Z. Muller(2823)
The Book of Numbers by Peter Bentley(2749)
The Great Unknown by Marcus du Sautoy(2520)
Once Upon an Algorithm by Martin Erwig(2461)
Easy Algebra Step-by-Step by Sandra Luna McCune(2439)
Lady Luck by Kristen Ashley(2389)
Practical Guide To Principal Component Methods in R (Multivariate Analysis Book 2) by Alboukadel Kassambara(2363)
Police Exams Prep 2018-2019 by Kaplan Test Prep(2336)
All Things Reconsidered by Bill Thompson III(2246)
Linear Time-Invariant Systems, Behaviors and Modules by Ulrich Oberst & Martin Scheicher & Ingrid Scheicher(2215)
