Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Stumpf, Michael P. H.
• Porter, Mason A.

Titel

Critical Truths About Power Laws

Ist Teil von

• Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), 2012-02, Vol.335 (6069), p.665-666

Ort / Verlag

Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science

Erscheinungsjahr

2012

Quelle

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Most reported power laws lack statistical support and mechanistic backing. The ability to summarize observations using explanatory and predictive theories is the greatest strength of modern science. A theoretical framework is perceived as particularly successful if it can explain very disparate facts. The observation that some apparently complex phenomena can exhibit startling similarities to dynamics generated with simple mathematical models ( 1 ) has led to empirical searches for fundamental laws by inspecting data for qualitative agreement with the behavior of such models. A striking feature that has attracted considerable attention is the apparent ubiquity of power-law relationships in empirical data. However, although power laws have been reported in areas ranging from finance and molecular biology to geophysics and the Internet, the data are typically insufficient and the mechanistic insights are almost always too limited for the identification of power-law behavior to be scientifically useful (see the figure). Indeed, even most statistically “successful” calculations of power laws offer little more than anecdotal value.