It’s Zipf’s Law, Baby

To paraphrase a loopy character in order to discuss a loopy conclusion: I do not understand Zipf’s Law. I merely enforce it.

At least that is the message from the New York Times. Zipf’s Law is an artifact for Jon Hofmeyr to convince a company to give him a pile of goodies liked peeled grapes in the company cafeteria.

Money quote:

“With this approach, the moment you determine a brand’s ranking, you can predict the market share,” (Hofmeyr) said.

As we will see, there is nothing factually correct or actually true about Hofmeyr’s quote.

Bad Statistics

The use of fishy of statistics represents a frequent an item of (dis) interest on this blog. Competitor Magazine becomes our first entrant in Dumb Use of Statistics with its 5 Myths of Bike Commuting (HT: Commute By Bike). The first myth, the roads are unsafe for cycling, contains enough hokum to be nonsensical. Let’s take a look.