The size of the largest cities in the world can be predicted by a mysterious law, the principle that no one understands Bashny.Net

However, the law perfectly rabotaet



In the last century mathematical principle called Zipf's Law predicted size of mega-cities around the world. The prediction came true, but the principle of the law no one understands.



Back in 1949, the linguist George Zipf noticed something strange in the way people use the word in the language: constantly uses only a small number of words, while the vast majority is very rarely used.

Zipf has placed words in order of popularity, and saw something amazing: the words of the first rank has always been used twice as often than the words of the second rank, and those, in turn, is used three times more words of the third rank.

Linguist also found that the same pattern, which he called the rule "rank-size" is valid for the division of income in a country: the richest individuals have twice as much money than those who are poorer, and they, in turn, are three times more money than those who stand on the step below.

The rule of "rank-size", later called the Zipf law, applies to the size of cities. City with the largest population in any country are generally twice the next highest, and so on. Incredibly, Zipf's law for cities working in absolutely all the countries of the world.

For example, consider the United States. According to the census of 2010, the largest city in the US, New York, home to 8,175,133 rights. In the second largest city in the country, Los Angeles, lives 3,792,621 people. Next City, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia, there were at 2,695,598, 2,100,263 and 1,526,006, respectively. Of course, numbers are not accurate, but consistent with the law of Zipf wonderful.

via factroom.ru