Power law distributions have infinite standard deviation and non-convergent means: when sampling from power-law distributions, the average keeps increasing with more samples rather than stabilizing, because extreme outliers dominate the average.
factualpending
Evidence Quote
“the average keeps going up, it doesn't converge. And the more you measure, the bigger the average is, which is really weird, it sounds impossible, but it's because it has such a heavy tail”
Created: 8/11/2026, 6:45:34 AM
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