Scale-free and power law distributions via fixed points and convergence of (thinning and conditioning) transformations
@article{ECP2923, author = {Richard Arratia and Thomas Liggett and Malcolm Williamson}, title = {Scale-free and power law distributions via fixed points and convergence of (thinning and conditioning) transformations}, journal = {Electron. Commun. Probab.}, fjournal = {Electronic Communications in Probability}, volume = {19}, year = {2014}, keywords = {thinning, power-law, scale-free, degree distribution, Pareto distribution}, abstract = {In discrete contexts such as the degree distribution for a graph, scale-free has traditionally been defined to be power-law. We propose a reasonable interpretation of scale-free, namely, invariance under the transformation of $p$-thinning, followed by conditioning on being positive.
For each $\beta \in (1,2)$, we show that there is a unique distribution which is a fixed point of this transformation; the distribution is power-law-$\beta$, and different from the usual Yule-Simon power law-$\beta$ that arises in preferential attachment models.In addition to characterizing these fixed points, we prove convergence results for iterates of the transformation.
}, pages = {no. 39, 1-10}, issn = {1083-589X}, doi = {10.1214/ECP.v19-2923}, url = {http://ecp.ejpecp.org/article/view/2923}}