When Does 80% Equal 50%?

Never mind that Vifredo Pareto has been vilified as the dude who influenced Mussolini to further develop fascism. Put that aside for a sec. Please.

The guy—Pareto, not Mussolini—came up with a cool power law probability: the Pareto distribution, which mathematically described the income distribution of various people from different countries.

He discovered that, generally speaking, 20% of the people—the “elite”—had (read: stole, purloined, looted, absconded with) 80% of the wealth. Continue reading When Does 80% Equal 50%?