Table 1 Zipf’s law and Heaps’ Law exponents for research fields and simulation.

From: The emergence of heterogeneous scaling in research institutions

Discipline

Heaps’ Law Exponent

Zipf’s Law Exponent

Comp. Sci.

0.554 ± 0.004

 − 1.470 ± 0.005

Physics

0.501 ± 0.007

 − 1.474 ± 0.006

Math

0.549 ± 0.008

 − 1.516 ± 0.006

Sociology

0.622 ± 0.005

 − 1.603 ± 0.009

Simulation

1/2

 − 3/2

  1. Each fit is a linear regression on log-scaled x and y axes for the number of researchers in each field above 100. Errors are standard errors of linear regression coefficients. Simulation scaling laws are theoretical exponents calculated for Polya’s urn model with triggering with coefficients ρ = 4 and ν = 225. See Results and Discussion for details of the mechanism coefficients.
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