Statistical Theories of Success

The Pareto and the log-normal distributions are commonly used to describe the statistical distribution of success. A detailed comparison of these distributions is made with Lotka's extensive observations on success as measured by rate of publication. These distributions are found to adequately describe the observed distribution only for low and moderate success. Contrariwise, the flat factor analysis of performance recently developed by the author in these Proceedings (59, 1078 (1968)) is shown to give an excellent agreement over the whole range of success. Lotka's data allows a determination of the number of environmental factors. The Pareto distribution does give an excellent agreement with the tail of the success distribution where success is defined as income. An interpretation of this distribution is here presented based upon the expected behavior of entrepreneurs.