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What countries are consistent with Zipf’s law? Not USA, England, Australia, Thailand, China, England, France.
by wombatmobile 5y ago
What countries are consistent with Zipf’s law?
Not USA, England, Australia, Thailand, China, England, France.
- dagw 5y agoUS is quite close for the top 10 cities (~1 million 'too many' people in New York, 200k too many in San Diego, Austin and Dallas), but there are FAR too many cities with a population around 250-500k England would be surprisingly close, if London had been half the size it currently is. If you took half the population of London and distributed it proportionally out among the rest of the country then you get quite close to a Zipf law distribution. France doesn't really follow Zipf law for its 5 largest cities, but cities 6-15 follow quite closely. Australia I 'weird' in that it's two largest cities are basically the same size, but if we ignore Melbourne for while the next few cities line up quite nicely before we start seeing a much faster drop off in city population than Zipf's law would predict Thailand is way off, since it has 1 massive city followed by 10 cities of more or less the same size. So yea, no country follows exactly, but it's closer in many cases than you might expect. Plus comparing the actual distribution to Zipf's law is an interesting way of comparing urbanization in different countries
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y agoIn the US, for metros you have NY at 20M, LA at 13M, and Chicago at 9.5M. But if you go by city - NYC is 8.5M, LA is 4M, Chicago is 2.7M.
- wombatmobile 5y agoAlternatively, New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA [19,216.18] Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA [13,214.8] Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI [ 9,458.54] Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX [ 7,573.14]