> A few notable examples of power laws are Pareto's law of income distribution, structural self-similarity of fractals, and scaling laws in biological systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law#Power-law_functions

An opinionated comparison of the bell-curve and Pareto distribution:

> (1) The power law is often an empirical fact (the way things are) but not necessarily the platonic idea (the way things ought to be); and

> (2) We can tame or mitigate at least some of the negative aspects of the power law by encouraging eclectic and diverse strategies.

Tyranny of the Power Law - http://econophysics.blogspot.com/2006/07/tyranny-of-power-la...