Re-inventing Willis

M.V. Simkin; V.P. Roychowdhury

Re-inventing Willis

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arxiv physics/0601192 v3 pith:3ZJAXB6W submitted 2006-01-25 physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mechmath.STstat.TH

Re-inventing Willis

M.V. Simkin , V.P. Roychowdhury This is my paper

classification physics.soc-ph cond-mat.stat-mechmath.STstat.TH

keywords relatedreviewwillisactivitiesbiologicalbranchingcloselycoagulation

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Scientists often re-invent things that were long known. Here we review these activities as related to the mechanism of producing power law distributions, originally proposed in 1922 by Yule to explain experimental data on the sizes of biological genera, collected by Willis. We also review the history of re-invention of closely related branching processes, random graphs and coagulation models.

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Cited by 1 Pith paper

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

On the transformation of the Maxwell-Boltzmann Distribution to a Power-Law
astro-ph.HE 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 5.0

Power-law distributions arise in colliding hard-sphere systems from Maxwell-Boltzmann when starting far from equilibrium, with scale-free intermediate dynamics and open scale-free boundaries.