This analysis of Zipf's law uses an index for the sequence of observed values of the variables in a Zipf-type relationship. Three important properties relating rank, count, and frequency are identified, shapes of Zipf-type curves are described, and parameters of the Mandelbrot-Zipf law are discussed. (Author/LRW)

Four empirical laws of bibliometrics--anomalous number, Lotka's, Zipf's, and Bradford's--together with Laplace's "law of succession" and de Solla Price's cumulative advantage distribution are shown to be almost identical. A simple model shows that the frequency forms conform with inverse square law over appropriate interval. (Fifteen…

A rudimentary description of Markov Chains is presented in order to introduce its use to describe and to predict authors' movements among subareas of the discipline of ethnomusicology. Other possible applications are suggested. (Author)

Examines relationships among the parameters of the Zipf size-frequency distribution as well as its sampling properties. Highlights include its importance in bibliometrics, tables for the sampling distribution of the maximal value of a finite Zipf distribution, and an approximation formula for confidence intervals. (Author/LRW)

A step-by-step outline is presented for testing the applicability of Lotka's law of scientific productivity. Steps include the computation of the values of the exponent and constant based on Lotka's method and the test for significance of observed frequency distribution against the estimated theoretical distribution derived from Lotka's formula.…

Discussion of a new method of index term dictionary compression in an inverted-file-oriented database highlights a technique of word coding, which generates short fixed-length codes obtained from the index terms themselves by analysis of monogram and bigram statistical distributions. Substantial savings in communication channel utilization are…

Reports algorithm for calculation of term discrimination values that is sufficiently fast in operation to permit use of exact values. Evidence is presented to show that relationship between term discrimination and term frequency is crucially dependent upon type of inter-document similarity measure used for calculation of discrimination values. (13…

Describes study that compared terminology indexing and citation indexing to determine the similarity of documents retrieved. Information science articles from 1971 to 1983 in three journals were studied for term co-occurrences. The distinction between relevant and pertinent documents is discussed, and further research topics are suggested. (LRW)

Zipfian laws for frequency distributions of word pairs and longer phrases are derived from text sample analysis. From crossing of Zipfian curves, it is deduced that number of multi-word phrases that occur frequently in text is surprisingly small, of same order of magnitude as number of individual word-types. (8 references) (EJS)