MATHEMATICAL MYSTERIES - THE PARETO PRINCIPLE

by Rylan Hoffius

One of the greatest mysteries of the world is not 42 as the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy would have us believe, but rather the 80/20 rule. Also known as the Pareto Principle, it asserts that the minority of causes leads to the majority of a given result. Specifically that in many (but not all) situations 80% of a given property comes from 20% of the population. While this is not an absolute rule, this is seen with remarkable consistency in both the social and physical sciences. Developed by management consultant Joseph M. Juran based on a discovery by Italian sociologist Vilfred Pareto that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by around 20% of the population. It was soon discovered that in many places around the world this tendency continued. Around 20% of the global population lives in wealthy countries, and 20% of the population owns around 80% of the world´s wealth, though wealth distribution varies vastly between different countries. According to Microsoft, ¨80 percent of system failures tend to be the result of 20 percent of the common errors or bugs.¨ In fact Molybdenum, which incidentally has an atomic number of 42, is used in approximately 80% of steel production according to ESPI. It is also a practical way to approach time management and projects in real life. While many variations and exceptions exist, the fact that the 80/20 rule is a noticeable trend in several different fields shows how much we don´t know, and how much we can learn from studying such phenomena. 

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Scheele, Carl Welhelm. “Molybdenum Wire and Rod.” ESPI Metals, https://www.espimetals.com/index.php/technical-data/874-Molybdenum%20Wire%20and%20Rod. Accessed 11 October 2022.
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