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A comment on Why isn't everything normally distributed?. Parent comment

Re:Why isn't everything normally distributed? by wenc on Friday July 21, 2017 @09:50AM (#14820505)
There's also joke that goes:

Power law walks into a bar. Bartender says, "I've seen a hundred power laws. Nobody orders anything." Power law says, "1000 beers, please".

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Re:Why isn't everything normally distributed? by JadeNB on Saturday July 22, 2017 @08:51AM (#14826932)
> Power law walks into a bar. Bartender says, "I've seen a hundred power laws. Nobody orders anything." Power law says, "1000 beers, please".

Agh, I'm a mathematician and should get this, but I don't. Is the joke just that power laws give behaviour that is very small for quite a while, and then becomes suddenly large?

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Re:Why isn't everything normally distributed? by duggan on Monday July 31, 2017 @06:43AM (#14890809)
I'm not a mathematician, but I think the joke is that you can't infer a meaningful average from a power law.
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