The Pareto Principle (80-20 rule) and Sturgeon's law are overlapping rules-of-thumb.
Sturgeon's law is a statement from Theodore Sturgeon that stated that 90% of all science fiction stories were crap. This has been extended to other fields. It basically says that a small percentage of any endeavor is exception while the rest is mediocre or poor.
The Pareto Principle basically says that the majority of states (80%) is associated with a minority (20%) of actors. Some examples:
(1) concentration of wealth
(2) problem workers in the workplace
(3) healthcare costs
There is overlap with a Gaussian distribution or Z-score.
The practical impact of these observational rules:
(1) applying a solution to all members of a set equally will not solve any problems
(2) focusing on the small percent of outliers is efficient
To read more or access our algorithms and calculators, please log in or register.
