Populations of cities power law (Zipf's law)
In a given country, the population of a city is inversely proportional to a power of the city’s rank by size in the country:
\[ \text{Population of $r$-th largest citiy} P(r) \approx \frac{A}{r^b} \]The value of $b$ is often close to 1.
Example for Colombia (source)
Zipf’s Law for Colombia
Used in AI labs
- Power function lab for precalculus.