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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.
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.