The empirical law of natural categorization
- 1 May 1983
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Journal of Information Science
- Vol. 6 (5) , 147-157
- https://doi.org/10.1177/016555158300600502
Abstract
Two kinds of categorization are distinguished - rational and natural. Quantitative aspects of natural categorization are explored by means of a distribution first derived by Laplace but which is here slightly modified to make it more adaptable. This basic distribution, with an inverse square law probability density function, can be simply related to the empirical distri butions of Lotka, Zipf, Bradford and others. Some implications of this unified empirical law of natural categorization are discussed.Keywords
This publication has 8 references indexed in Scilit:
- Measurement in information science: Objective and subjective metrical spaceJournal of the American Society for Information Science, 1980
- Frequency distributions of scientific performance a bibliography of Lotka's law and related phenomenaScientometrics, 1978
- THEORY OF THE BRADFORD LAWJournal of Documentation, 1977
- A general theory of bibliometric and other cumulative advantage processesJournal of the American Society for Information Science, 1976
- On a Distribution Law for Word FrequenciesJournal of the American Statistical Association, 1975
- THE BRADFORD DISTRIBUTIONJournal of Documentation, 1967
- The Bibliography of Operational ResearchJournal of the Operational Research Society, 1960
- ON A CLASS OF SKEW DISTRIBUTION FUNCTIONSBiometrika, 1955