Lotka's Inverse Square Law of Scientific Productivity: Its Methods and Statistics

摘要

This brief communication analyzes the statistics and methods Lotka used toderive his inverse square law of scientific productivity from the standpoint ofmodern theory. It finds that he violated the norms of this theory by extremelytruncating his data on the right. It also proves that Lotka himself played animportant role in establishing the commonly used method of identifyingpower-law behavior by the R^2 fit to a regression line on a log-log plot thatmodern theory considers unreliable by basing the derivation of his law on thisvery method.