George Kingsley Zipf facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
George Kingsley Zipf
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1917 photograph from the 1919 Annual of the Freeport High School, Freeport, Illinois
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| Born | January 7, 1902 |
| Died | September 25, 1950 (aged 48) |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Harvard College |
| Known for | Zipf's law |
| Spouse(s) | Joyce Waters Brown Zipf |
| Children | Robert Zipf, Katherine Sandstrom, Joyce Harrington, Henry Zipf |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Statistics, linguistics |
George Kingsley Zipf (pronounced "Ziff") was an American linguist and philologist. He was born on January 7, 1902, and passed away on September 25, 1950. He became well-known for studying how often words appear in different languages.
Zipf earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. He also studied in Germany at the University of Bonn and the University of Berlin. Later, he became the Chairman of the German Department at Harvard. He was also a University Lecturer, which meant he could teach any subject he chose.
He worked with the Chinese language and studied demographics, which is about how populations are structured. His work helps explain many things, like how the Internet works or how income is shared among people in a country.
Contents
Understanding Zipf's Law
George Zipf is famous for something called Zipf's law. This law explains a pattern found in many different kinds of data.
What Zipf's Law Says
In simple terms, Zipf's law states that in any collection of items, a few items will appear very often, while many other items will appear only rarely.
For example, in a book, a few words like "the" or "and" are used all the time. But many other words, like "rhinoceros" or "constellation," are used much less often.
How It Works with Words
Zipf's law shows that the second most common word appears about half as often as the most common word. The third most common word appears about one-third as often, and so on.
Zipf first discovered this pattern in 1935 by studying how often words are used. This was one of the first times anyone seriously studied word frequency in an academic way.
Applying the Law to Other Areas
Even though Zipf first thought of this law for language, he later realized it could apply to many other things. For instance, he noticed a similar pattern in how income is distributed among people in a country.
In his 1941 book, "National Unity and Disunity," he suggested that big changes in this "normal curve of income distribution" could mean that people might want social changes or even a revolution. This means if the pattern of income distribution changed a lot, it could lead to strong pressure for society to change.
See also
In Spanish: George Kingsley Zipf para niños
- Zipf–Mandelbrot law
