Long-tailed distributions are a signature of multifractal properties in data
Math may comprise only one percent of the vast world of things we talk about. Technical discussion among STEM professionals may comprise only one percent of the math talk (the rest being dominated by the arithmetic kids do in class, or basic accounting, or splitting the tab at restaurants). Among those professionals, one percent of the discussion might be about number theory. Within number theory, perhaps one percent of the conversation touches on, say, the Grothendieck–Katz p-curvature conjecture.
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Multiplying those four percentages by the eight billion people on Earth gives eighty readers, if my own grade-school math is right, which seems in the right ballpark for this particular community of interest.
Multiplicative interactions.