Zipf–Mandelbrot law

Zipf–Mandelbrot
Parameters	$N \in \{1,2,3\ldots\}$ (integer) $q \in [0;\infty)$ (real) $s>0\,$ (real)
Support	$k \in \{1,2,\ldots,N\}$
pmf	$\frac{1/(k+q)^s}{H_{N,q,s}}$
CDF	$\frac{H_{k,q,s}}{H_{N,q,s}}$
Mean	$\frac{H_{N,q,s-1}}{H_{N,q,s}}-q$
Mode	$1\,$
Entropy	$\frac{s}{H_{N,q,s}}\sum_{k=1}^N\frac{\ln(k + q)}{(k + q)^s} +\ln(H_{N,q,s})$

In probability theory and statistics, the Zipf–Mandelbrot law is a discrete probability distribution. Also known as the Pareto-Zipf law, it is a power-law distribution on ranked data, named after the linguist George Kingsley Zipf who suggested a simpler distribution called Zipf's law, and the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, who subsequently generalized it.

The probability mass function is given by:

f(k;N,q,s)=\frac{1/(k+q)^s}{H_{N,q,s}}

where $H_{N,q,s}$ is given by:

H_{N,q,s}=\sum_{i=1}^N \frac{1}{(i+q)^s}

which may be thought of as a generalization of a harmonic number. In the formula, $k$ is the rank of the data, and $q$ and $s$ are parameters of the distribution. In the limit as $N$ approaches infinity, this becomes the Hurwitz zeta function $\zeta(s,q)$ . For finite $N$ and $q=0$ the Zipf–Mandelbrot law becomes Zipf's law. For infinite $N$ and $q=0$ it becomes a Zeta distribution.

Applications

The distribution of words ranked by their frequency in a random text corpus is approximated by a power-law distribution, known as Zipf's law.

If one plots the frequency rank of words contained in a moderately sized corpus of text data versus the number of occurrences or actual frequencies, one obtains a power-law distribution, with exponent close to one (but see Powers, 1998 and Gelbukh & Sidorov, 2001). Zipf's law implicitly assumes a fixed vocabulary size, but the Harmonic series with s=1 does not converge, while the Zipf-Mandelbrot generalization with s>1 does. Furthermore, there is evidence that the closed class of functional words that define a language obeys a Zipf-Mandelbrot distribution with different parameters from the open classes of contentive words that vary by topic, field and register.^[1]

In ecological field studies, the relative abundance distribution (i.e. the graph of the number of species observed as a function of their abundance) is often found to conform to a Zipf–Mandelbrot law.^[2]

Within music, many metrics of measuring "pleasing" music conform to Zipf–Mandelbrot distributions.^[3]

Notes

↑ Powers, David M W (1998). "Applications and explanations of Zipf's law". Association for Computational Linguistics: 151–160.
↑ Mouillot, D; Lepretre, A (2000). "Introduction of relative abundance distribution (RAD) indices, estimated from the rank-frequency diagrams (RFD), to assess changes in community diversity". Environmental Monitoring and Assessment (Springer) 63 (2): 279–295. doi:10.1023/A:1006297211561. Retrieved 24 Dec 2008.
↑ Manaris, B; Vaughan, D; Wagner, CS; Romero, J; Davis, RB. "Evolutionary Music and the Zipf-Mandelbrot Law: Developing Fitness Functions for Pleasant Music". Proceedings of 1st European Workshop on Evolutionary Music and Art (EvoMUSART2003) 611.

References

Mandelbrot, Benoît (1965). "Information Theory and Psycholinguistics". In B.B. Wolman and E. Nagel. Scientific psychology. Basic Books. Reprinted as
- Mandelbrot, Benoît (1968) [1965]. "Information Theory and Psycholinguistics". In R.C. Oldfield and J.C. Marchall. Language. Penguin Books.
Powers, David M W (1998). "Applications and explanations of Zipf's law". Association for Computational Linguistics: 151–160.
Zipf, George Kingsley (1932). Selected Studies of the Principle of Relative Frequency in Language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

External links

Probability distributions

List of probability distributions

Discrete univariate with finite support	Benford Bernoulli Beta-binomial binomial categorical hypergeometric Poisson binomial Rademacher discrete uniform Zipf Zipf–Mandelbrot

Discrete univariate with infinite support	beta negative binomial Borel Conway–Maxwell–Poisson discrete phase-type Delaporte extended negative binomial Gauss–Kuzmin geometric logarithmic negative binomial parabolic fractal Poisson Skellam Yule–Simon zeta

Continuous univariate supported on a bounded interval	Arcsine ARGUS Balding–Nichols Bates Beta Beta rectangular Irwin–Hall Kumaraswamy logit-normal Noncentral beta raised cosine Reciprocal Triangular U-quadratic uniform Wigner semicircle

Continuous univariate supported on a semi-infinite interval	Benini Benktander 1st kind Benktander 2nd kind Beta prime Burr chi-squared chi Dagum Davis exponential-logarithmic Erlang exponential F folded normal Flory-Schulz Fréchet Gamma Gamma/Gompertz generalized inverse Gaussian Gompertz half-logistic half-normal Hotelling's T-squared hyper-Erlang hyperexponential hypoexponential inverse chi-squared scaled inverse chi-squared inverse Gaussian inverse gamma Kolmogorov Lévy log-Cauchy log-Laplace log-logistic log-normal matrix-exponential Maxwell–Boltzmann Maxwell–Jüttner Mittag-Leffler Nakagami noncentral chi-squared Pareto phase-type Poly-Weibull Rayleigh relativistic Breit–Wigner Rice shifted Gompertz truncated normal type-2 Gumbel Weibull Wilks's lambda

Continuous univariate supported on the whole real line	Cauchy exponential power Fisher's z generalized normal generalized hyperbolic geometric stable Gumbel Holtsmark hyperbolic secant Johnson S_U Landau Laplace asymmetric Laplace logistic noncentral t normal (Gaussian) normal-inverse Gaussian skew normal slash stable Student's t type-1 Gumbel Tracy–Widom variance-gamma Voigt

Continuous univariate with support whose type varies	generalized extreme value generalized Pareto Tukey lambda q-Gaussian q-exponential q-Weibull shifted log-logistic

Mixed continuous-discrete univariate	rectified Gaussian

Multivariate (joint)	Discrete Ewens multinomial Dirichlet-multinomial negative multinomial Continuous Dirichlet generalized Dirichlet multivariate normal multivariate stable multivariate t normal-inverse-gamma normal-gamma Matrix-valued inverse matrix gamma inverse-Wishart matrix normal matrix t matrix gamma normal-inverse-Wishart normal-Wishart Wishart

Directional	Univariate (circular) directional Circular uniform univariate von Mises wrapped normal wrapped Cauchy wrapped exponential wrapped asymmetric Laplace wrapped Lévy Bivariate (spherical) Kent Bivariate (toroidal) bivariate von Mises Multivariate von Mises–Fisher Bingham

Degenerate and singular	Degenerate Dirac delta function Singular Cantor

Families	Circular compound Poisson elliptical exponential natural exponential location-scale maximum entropy mixture Pearson Tweedie wrapped

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