Do 20 pages of a book gives you 90% of its words?

Re:Do 20 pages of a book gives you 90% of its words? by Finch2192 on Friday June 30, 2017 @05:37PM (#14673740)

This doesn't seem all that groundbreaking, it's just an instance of Zipf's law in action, is it not?

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Re:Do 20 pages of a book gives you 90% of its words? by ppod on Friday June 30, 2017 @08:09PM (#14674399)

Specifically the equivalent Heap's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaps%27_law

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Re:Do 20 pages of a book gives you 90% of its words? by kiechu on Friday June 30, 2017 @05:49PM (#14673789)

Yes, that's Zipf's law applied. I doubt that many language learners knew about this law. I think it is still worth pointing out, that when you go through the beginning of the book, reading will become rapidly easier.

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Re:Do 20 pages of a book gives you 90% of its words? by twoodfin on Friday June 30, 2017 @06:49PM (#14674038)

It'd be an interesting exercise in Modernist writing to try producing a book that violates Zipf's law, say by hashing all but the most common few hundred words into chapter buckets.

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Re:Do 20 pages of a book gives you 90% of its words? by contravariant on Friday June 30, 2017 @07:48PM (#14674310)

Maybe, but if you know a nice proof I'd love to hear it.

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