The empirical law of natural categorization

Two kinds of categorization are distinguished - rational and natural. Quantitative aspects of natural categorization are explored by means of a distribution first derived by Laplace but which is here slightly modified to make it more adaptable. This basic distribution, with an inverse square law pro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of information science 1983-06, Vol.6 (5), p.147-157
Main Author: Brookes, B.C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Categories
Classification
Exact sciences and technology
Frequency distributions
Information
Information and communication sciences
Information science
Information science. Documentation
Librarianship
Library and information science. General aspects
Mathematical analysis
Mathematical models
Natural categories
Profession
Sciences and techniques of general use
Theories
Theories, definitions and sources in information science
Theory
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Summary:Two kinds of categorization are distinguished - rational and natural. Quantitative aspects of natural categorization are explored by means of a distribution first derived by Laplace but which is here slightly modified to make it more adaptable. This basic distribution, with an inverse square law probability density function, can be simply related to the empirical distri butions of Lotka, Zipf, Bradford and others. Some implications of this unified empirical law of natural categorization are discussed.
ISSN:0165-5515
1741-6485
DOI:10.1177/016555158300600502