Taylor's Law Holds for Finite OEIS Integer Sequences and Binomial Coefficients

Simon Demers

The American Statistician, 2018, vol. 72, issue 4, 376-378

Abstract: Taylor's law (TL) predicts that the variance and the mean will be related empirically through a power-law function. TL previously has been shown to arise even in the absence of biological, ecological or physical processes. We report here that the mean and variance of 110 finite integer sequences in the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS) obey TL approximately. We also show that the binomial coefficients on each row of Pascal's triangle obey TL asymptotically. These applications of TL to seemingly unrelated mathematical structures tend to confirm there might be purely statistical, context-independent mechanisms at play. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

Date: 2018
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DOI: 10.1080/00031305.2017.1422439

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