[xjay]

"The 80/20 rule"/The Pareto principle

> Mathematically, the 80/20 rule is roughly described by a power law distribution (also known as a Pareto distribution) for a particular set of parameters. Many natural phenomena distribute according to power law statistics. It is an adage of business management that "80% of sales come from 20% of clients." [1][2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law

[hatthew]

Could you elaborate on how this is related? To me, the 80/20 rule and the 1:5 matter ratio seem like entirely separate concepts that coincidentally share the same ratio.

[robertlagrant]

1:4, no?

[hatthew]

Good point, I wasn't thinking and I equated ratios and fractions. That should make the 80/20 rule even less related to the 1:5 matter ratio?

[delecti]

Well 80:20 and 5:1 are pretty similar ratios.

Though really the issue with the comparison is that it implies that 80% (or ~83.3%) of the <something> is correlated to the light matter, and the other 20% (or ~16.7%) of the <something> is correlated to the dark matter. Maybe eventually we'll learn enough about dark matter and discover that, yeah actually, 1/6 of the life, or unobtanium, or whatever, is actually in the dark matter. But for now, I agree that the Pareto principle seems pretty irrelevant.