Scientific Definition
A relationship where a small number of inputs account for most outputs.
Plain-English Definition
A relationship where a small number of inputs account for most outputs.
Feynman Explanation
A few causes create most effects.
Core Principle
A relationship where a small number of inputs account for most outputs.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
A relationship where a small number of inputs account for most outputs.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Power laws exist everywhere, but they are rarely managed as such.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
A few causes create most effects.
Examples
- A few customers generate most revenue; a few bugs cause most crashes.
- Power laws exist everywhere, but they are rarely managed as such.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Identify the vital few and allocate resources accordingly.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Identify the vital few and allocate resources accordingly.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
A small number of items account for most of the value.
Ignoring general statistics in favor of specific, vivid information.
Posterior = (likelihood × prior) / evidence.
Update beliefs in proportion to the strength of new evidence.
Start with a prior; update with new evidence.
Novices experiencing early success, often due to variance and small samples.
High-impact, hard-to-predict, retrospectively explainable events.
Striking pattern that is statistically expected in large samples.
Reasoning in distributions — ranges and probabilities — rather than points.
Average outcomes across the population differ from outcomes across time for one person.
A rough calculation using order-of-magnitude reasoning.
In quantum mechanics, certain pairs of properties cannot both be precisely known.