Hierarchy in social organization

✍ Scribed by S.V Buldyrev; N.V Dokholyan; S Erramilli; M Hong; J.Y Kim; G Malescio; H.E Stanley

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 248 KB
• Volume: 330
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0378-4371
• DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2003.09.041

✦ Synopsis

We ÿnd that area and population distributions of nations follow an inverse power-law, as is known for cities, but with a di erent exponent. To interpret this result, we develop a growth model based on the geometrical properties of partitioning of the plane. The substantial agreement between the model and the actual nation distributions motivates the hypothesis that the distribution of aggregates of organisms is related to land partitioning. To test this hypothesis we follow the development of bacterial colonies of Escherichia coli, which, compared to humans, are on a completely di erent level of complexity. We ÿnd that the distributions of E. coli colonies follow an inverse power law with exponent similar to that of nations.