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The birth-death-mutation process: a new paradigm for fat tailed distributions
Yosef E Maruvka1, David A Kessler, Nadav M Shnerb
1Department of Physics, Bar Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel.
Plos One
|November 10, 2011
Summary
Success in complex systems may be due to luck, not inherent quality. The neutral birth-death-mutation (BDM) process explains entire distributions, challenging traditional selection theories.
Area of Science:
- Ecology
- Evolutionary Biology
- Complex Systems Science
Background:
- Fat-tailed statistics and power-laws are common in complex systems, often attributed to inherent 'quality' like fitness or talent.
- Existing neutral theories primarily explain the power-law tail of success distributions, not the entire distribution.
Purpose of the Study:
- To propose a "neutral" outlook on success, emphasizing the role of luck over inherent quality.
- To introduce and validate the neutral birth-death-mutation (BDM) process as a comprehensive model for explaining success distributions.
Main Methods:
- Modeling the neutral birth-death-mutation (BDM) process.
- Comparing the BDM-generated distributions with empirical data from complex systems.
Main Results:
- The BDM process remarkably fits numerous empirical distributions, explaining the entire spectrum of success.
- The BDM model provides a more economical and accurate explanation than previous neutral theories that focused only on power-law tails.
Conclusions:
- Luck, as modeled by the BDM process, is a primary driver of success in complex systems.
- The BDM distribution should be considered a standard neutral model, with deviations indicating the influence of fitness and selection.
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