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MENTAL MODEL · M5990

Pareto Distribution

Pareto Distribution
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Version 1.0.0 · Updated 2026-07-28

CORE DEFINITION

The Pareto distribution, named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, is a power-law distribution found in a large number of real-world phenomena. Outside economics, it is also known as the Bradford distribution. In the Pareto distribution, if X is a random variable, then the probability distribution of X is given by the following formula: P(X > x) = (x / x_min)^(-k).

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The Pareto distribution, named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, is a power-law distribution found in a large number of real-world phenomena. Outside economics, it is also known as the Bradford distribution. In the Pareto distribution, if X is a random variable, then the probability distribution of X is given by the following formula: P(X > x).

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The Pareto distribution is a power-law heavy-tailed distribution: a few large values account for the majority of the share, and the tail decays slowly according to a power law. Its 'heavy tail' means that extreme values cannot be ignored, and the mean is often inflated by a few very large values.

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Source support: Explicit

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    zh.wikipedia.orghttps://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B8%95%E7%B4%AF%E6%89%98%E5%88%86%E5%B8%83ZH · Explicit
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