Scale-free and power law distributions via fixed points and convergence of (thinning and conditioning) transformations

DOI10.1214/ECP.V19-2923zbMATH Open1320.60010arXiv1306.3017OpenAlexW2120206960MaRDI QIDQ457791FDOQ457791

Richard Arratia, Malcolm J. Williamson, Thomas M. Liggett

Publication date: 29 September 2014

Published in: Electronic Communications in Probability (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: In discrete contexts such as the degree distribution for a graph, emph{scale-free} has traditionally been emph{defined} to be emph{power-law}. We propose a reasonable interpretation of emph{scale-free}, namely, invariance under the transformation of $p$-thinning, followed by conditioning on being positive. For each $$, we show that there is a unique distribution which is a fixed point of this transformation; the distribution is power-law-$$, and different from the usual Yule--Simon power law-$$ that arises in preferential attachment models. In addition to characterizing these fixed points, we prove convergence results for iterates of the transformation.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.3017

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zbMATH Keywords

Pareto distributiondegree distributionthinningpower-lawscale-free

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Convergence of probability measures (60B10) Small world graphs, complex networks (graph-theoretic aspects) (05C82)

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