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Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort: An Introduction to Human Ecology
2012 Reprint of 1949 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. The principle of least effort is a broad theory that covers diverse fields from evolutionary biology to webpage design. It postulates that animals, people, even well designed machines will naturally choose the path of least resistance or "effort." This is perhaps best known or at least documented among researchers in the field of library and information science. Their principle states that an information seeking client will tend to use the most convenient search method, in the least exacting mode available. Information seeking behavior stops as soon as minimally acceptable results are found. This theory holds true regardless of the user's proficiency as a searcher, or their level of subject expertise. The principle of least effort is analogous to the path of least resistance. The principle was studied by linguist George Kingsley Zipf, author of this classic treatment of the subject. He theorized that the distribution of word use was due to the tendency to communicate efficiently with least effort and this theory is known as Zipf's Law.
588 pages, Paperback
First published June 6, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 11, 2017
Prof George Kingsley Zipf was a professor of linguistics and a long time faculty member of Harvard. In 1949 he published Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort. At one level it reads like the man has discovered a very good hammer, more of a sonic screw driver, and in over 540 pages he proceeds to demonstrate that everything is a nail, or whatever it is a sonic screw driver is supposed to fix.
In short what Dr. Zipf proposes is that things will generally take the line of least resistance. What he has done is almost that eloquent, and almost as universal as he clearly believes.
Beginning with a simple argument
From the point of view of the speaker, a language of one word- a word that achieves everything the speaker needs is perfect.
From the point of view of the listener, a language where every word has its own unique meaning insures that the listener has no problems understanding; is perfect.
Professor Zipf then demonstrates that the dynamic created by these two extremes can be demonstrated as a mathematical statement and that the graph of this equation can be applied to topics as far apart as the allocation of column inches in a Newspaper and the allocation of money in an economic system.
In fact his equation, and more exactly the chart of its output are known as Zipf's law or the zeta distribution. By charting his predicted distribution as a natural log of the values on both the X and y axis, the reader is presented with a simple sloped line. The book will demonstrate dozens of examples wherein there is no objective reason why the data should distribute as The Law says, except that The Law seems to hold.
Most interesting is his argument that ALL Economic systems, and by extensions, all societies MUST distribute wealth according to this same slope or risk being unstable, as in subject to violent revolt The violence only serving to reinstate a distribution that will restore reinstate the predicted slope. Lots of people getting just enough to survive and layers of increasing wealth distributed to ever fewer people.
The math works out from the bottom as the chances of being in the bottom spot is twice that of being in the next one up which is twice that of being in the next one up until you reach the top who are pretty much always going to be on the top. He does allow for upward mobility, but anyone moving up has to mean someone else is moving down.
It is because of his politics and his insistent inflexibility that Zipf is not as influential as was his sel-confident belief he was by right. That is he believed he had created and proved the single most important driving, objective fact of the human condition. Adopt his point of view and all policy making, religious beliefs and trips to buy groceries are no more complex that whatever answer his math generates.
It is a fact that Zepf's law has applications. He has directly influenced, among other things things web design.
An unintentional aspect of this book has to do with the field of statistics. Although the entire power of his Law is based on the statistical relationships Professor Zipf uses as examples, he had very little ability to test his results. There is nothing here of confidence intervals, or controlling of variables while performing multiple regression. In this sense this book can serve as an example of how much harder it can be to prove a hypothesis without having the tools to properly test your results.
This was one of the hardest books I have read in many years. It is not a casual read. The lack of modern statistical techniques may render it near useless as a study in stats. My recommendation is that you should not confuse this with typical summer reads, but it is deserving of respect.
In short what Dr. Zipf proposes is that things will generally take the line of least resistance. What he has done is almost that eloquent, and almost as universal as he clearly believes.
Beginning with a simple argument
From the point of view of the speaker, a language of one word- a word that achieves everything the speaker needs is perfect.
From the point of view of the listener, a language where every word has its own unique meaning insures that the listener has no problems understanding; is perfect.
Professor Zipf then demonstrates that the dynamic created by these two extremes can be demonstrated as a mathematical statement and that the graph of this equation can be applied to topics as far apart as the allocation of column inches in a Newspaper and the allocation of money in an economic system.
In fact his equation, and more exactly the chart of its output are known as Zipf's law or the zeta distribution. By charting his predicted distribution as a natural log of the values on both the X and y axis, the reader is presented with a simple sloped line. The book will demonstrate dozens of examples wherein there is no objective reason why the data should distribute as The Law says, except that The Law seems to hold.
Most interesting is his argument that ALL Economic systems, and by extensions, all societies MUST distribute wealth according to this same slope or risk being unstable, as in subject to violent revolt The violence only serving to reinstate a distribution that will restore reinstate the predicted slope. Lots of people getting just enough to survive and layers of increasing wealth distributed to ever fewer people.
The math works out from the bottom as the chances of being in the bottom spot is twice that of being in the next one up which is twice that of being in the next one up until you reach the top who are pretty much always going to be on the top. He does allow for upward mobility, but anyone moving up has to mean someone else is moving down.
It is because of his politics and his insistent inflexibility that Zipf is not as influential as was his sel-confident belief he was by right. That is he believed he had created and proved the single most important driving, objective fact of the human condition. Adopt his point of view and all policy making, religious beliefs and trips to buy groceries are no more complex that whatever answer his math generates.
It is a fact that Zepf's law has applications. He has directly influenced, among other things things web design.
An unintentional aspect of this book has to do with the field of statistics. Although the entire power of his Law is based on the statistical relationships Professor Zipf uses as examples, he had very little ability to test his results. There is nothing here of confidence intervals, or controlling of variables while performing multiple regression. In this sense this book can serve as an example of how much harder it can be to prove a hypothesis without having the tools to properly test your results.
This was one of the hardest books I have read in many years. It is not a casual read. The lack of modern statistical techniques may render it near useless as a study in stats. My recommendation is that you should not confuse this with typical summer reads, but it is deserving of respect.
December 13, 2020
George Zipf made his name through his discovery that the rank-frequency distribution of word usage in languages as diverse as English, Gothic, and Dakota falls off as a harmonic series. In this book, he seeks an underlying theory to explain this result, which he then applies to a broad range of problems in sociology.
This theory, which he calls the "principle of least effort", says that man's underlying motivation in designing his actions is to minimize the average work he must do over the rest of his life. In the context of linguistics, the notion of "least effort" means, for the speaker, possessing a single word that means exactly what he wants to say and, for the listener, having a completely differentiated language where each of the many words has a unique meaning. Zipf convincingly derives the harmonic rank-frequency distribution from this principle via analogy to a workshop in which the craftsman keeps close to him a few versatile, commonly used tools and puts further away in the shop a larger number of clunky, specialized instruments.
From this rigorous discussion of the first five chapters, Zipf then broadens his scope, attempting to use the principle of least effort to explain a wide variety of phenomena. Some cases are more convincing—like his derivation of the Pareto wealth curve—and others much less so—e.g., derivations of the procreational drive, homosexuality, and dreams. While he has interesting things to say on a number of topics, the connection with the principle of least effort is often lost and the empirical data becomes more scarce and/or less convincing.
In the end, I do not think Zipf has derived human behavior from first principles. Even when "least effort" stays in sight, it is generally useful only in explaining means (i.e., why a man approaches a problem in a certain way) and not motivations (i.e., why he would want to do that thing in the first place). His great success, I think, is in providing "an objective language in terms of which persons can discuss social problems impersonally, even as physics is a language for the discussion of physical problems." Even if we cannot derive the answer to a particular problem of human behavior from his theory, we can certainly use "least effort" to wrap our heads around what Zipf would call the relevant "dynamics".
This theory, which he calls the "principle of least effort", says that man's underlying motivation in designing his actions is to minimize the average work he must do over the rest of his life. In the context of linguistics, the notion of "least effort" means, for the speaker, possessing a single word that means exactly what he wants to say and, for the listener, having a completely differentiated language where each of the many words has a unique meaning. Zipf convincingly derives the harmonic rank-frequency distribution from this principle via analogy to a workshop in which the craftsman keeps close to him a few versatile, commonly used tools and puts further away in the shop a larger number of clunky, specialized instruments.
From this rigorous discussion of the first five chapters, Zipf then broadens his scope, attempting to use the principle of least effort to explain a wide variety of phenomena. Some cases are more convincing—like his derivation of the Pareto wealth curve—and others much less so—e.g., derivations of the procreational drive, homosexuality, and dreams. While he has interesting things to say on a number of topics, the connection with the principle of least effort is often lost and the empirical data becomes more scarce and/or less convincing.
In the end, I do not think Zipf has derived human behavior from first principles. Even when "least effort" stays in sight, it is generally useful only in explaining means (i.e., why a man approaches a problem in a certain way) and not motivations (i.e., why he would want to do that thing in the first place). His great success, I think, is in providing "an objective language in terms of which persons can discuss social problems impersonally, even as physics is a language for the discussion of physical problems." Even if we cannot derive the answer to a particular problem of human behavior from his theory, we can certainly use "least effort" to wrap our heads around what Zipf would call the relevant "dynamics".
June 26, 2009
Intriguing patterns in the way we use words. Also outlines the Principle of Least Effort - perfect for me!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews