The Zipf-Mandelbrot law

The Zipf-Mandelbrot law describes a pattern in how often words or items appear in natural language or datasets. It states that a few items (like common words) are used very frequently, while most items are rare. Specifically, the frequency of an item is inversely related to its rank in popularity, but with a slight adjustment for more accuracy. This means the second most common item appears about half as often as the most common, the third about a third, and so on. It helps explain why language and other systems have a few dominant elements and many rare ones.