The power law as an emergent property

Recent work has shown that the power function, a ubiquitous characteristic of learning, memory, and sensation, can emerge from the arithmetic averaging of exponential curves. In the present study, the forgetting process was simulated via computer to determine whether power curves can result from the averaging of other types of component curves. Each of several simulations contained 100 memory traces that were made to decay at different rates. The resulting component curves were then arithmetically averaged to produce an aggregate curve for each simulation. The simulations varied with respect to the forms of the component curves: exponential, range-limited linear, range-limited logarithmic, or power. The goodness of the aggregate curve's fit to a power function relative to other functions increased as the amount of intercomponent slope variability increased, irrespective of component-curve type. Thus, the power law's ubiquity may reflect the pervasiveness of slope variability across component functions. Moreover, power-curve emergence may constitute a methodological artifact, an explanatory construct, or both, depending on the locus of the effect.