Re:Why isn't everything normally distributed?
by cttet on Thursday July 20, 2017 @11:30PM
(#14817849)
Power law indicates an exponential distribution, which is often taught right after normal distribution in most probability classes. Normal distribution usually considered as white noise, hence a fixed value + white noise is often Normal, which is quite common as well.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Why isn't everything normally distributed?
by alimw on Thursday July 20, 2017 @11:41PM
(#14817903)
> Power law indicates an exponential distribution
This sounds wrong. One is invariant under scaling, the other under translation.
Re:Why isn't everything normally distributed?
by srean on Thursday July 20, 2017 @11:55PM
(#14817955)
> This sounds wrong.
It is.
However there is a way to make it correct. Your second sentence is spot on the intuition. If you log transform power-law distributed random variable the RV that you get is an exponentially distributed RV.