| Title |
Random Texts Do Not Exhibit the Real Zipf's Law-Like Rank Distribution
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
PLOS ONE, March 2010
|
| DOI | 10.1371/journal.pone.0009411 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Ramon Ferrer-i-Cancho, Brita Elvevåg |
| Abstract |
Zipf's law states that the relationship between the frequency of a word in a text and its rank (the most frequent word has rank , the 2nd most frequent word has rank ,...) is approximately linear when plotted on a double logarithmic scale. It has been argued that the law is not a relevant or useful property of language because simple random texts - constructed by concatenating random characters including blanks behaving as word delimiters - exhibit a Zipf's law-like word rank distribution. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 2 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Spain | 1 | 50% |
| Poland | 1 | 50% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Scientists | 1 | 50% |
| Members of the public | 1 | 50% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 70 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Germany | 4 | 6% |
| Australia | 1 | 1% |
| United Kingdom | 1 | 1% |
| Belgium | 1 | 1% |
| Spain | 1 | 1% |
| United States | 1 | 1% |
| Philippines | 1 | 1% |
| Unknown | 60 | 86% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 23 | 33% |
| Researcher | 12 | 17% |
| Other | 7 | 10% |
| Professor > Associate Professor | 6 | 9% |
| Student > Master | 5 | 7% |
| Other | 12 | 17% |
| Unknown | 5 | 7% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Physics and Astronomy | 16 | 23% |
| Computer Science | 10 | 14% |
| Psychology | 10 | 14% |
| Engineering | 6 | 9% |
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 4 | 6% |
| Other | 16 | 23% |
| Unknown | 8 | 11% |