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On the Widespread Occurrence of the Inverse Square Distribution in Social Sciences and Taxonomy

Guido Caldarelli·Cecile Caretta Cartozo·Paolo De Los Rios·Vito D. P. Servedio
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Abstract

The widespread occurrence of an inverse square relation in the hierarchical distribution of sub-communities within communities (or sub-species within species) has been recently invoked as a signature of hierarchical self-organization within social and ecological systems. Here we show that, whether such systems are self-organized or not, this behavior is the consequence of the tree-like classification method. Different tree-like classifications (both of real and truly random systems) display a similar statistical behaviour when considering the sizes of their sub-branches.

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Guido Caldarelli, Cecile Caretta Cartozo, Paolo De Los Rios, Vito D. P. Servedio. 2003-11-20. On the Widespread Occurrence of the Inverse Square Distribution in Social Sciences and Taxonomy. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreve.69.035101

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