Evolving Excellence: Power Laws and Pull Platforms

Bell Curve or Power Law, that is the question.

This, from Evolving Excellence:


"Power Laws and Pull Platforms

Today's post is guest authored by Craig Woll. Craig has a unique background in developing and applying instructional learning systems to lean manufacturing.

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I always appreciate reading an article written by someone with a heavier head than mine. In this case John Hagel contemplates on a serious topic 'The Power of Power Laws'. His article caught my attention quite some time ago but I've struggled articulating what I find so intriguing about his perspective. Maybe it is the mere fact that I had to use Merriam-Webster to look up half the words.

A gaussian distribution is used 'as a as a way to characterize the probability of events – most of us know it as the familiar bell curve with a significant hump in the middle and two relatively modest tails on either side of the hump.' On the other hand you have the 'Pareto, or power law, probability distribution'. One form of this is called the 80/20 rule.

We often attempt to describe the world in view of one of these two paradigms. I found myself on the left side of the bell curve in my statistics class so I won't even attempt further explanation at the risk of sounding foolish. However, I will take the liberty of quoting a journal article from Bill McKelvey and Pierpaolo Andriani:

Read more: Evolving Excellence: Power Laws and Pull Platforms:

South Carolina League of the South

Be careful what you write online

from SeoPedia.org

Because it could cost you your job and it’s definitely true.

These days, Google and the rest of the search engines (eg. Live, Yahoo!, Ask and so on) have become the central location where everyone can find information about anyone or anything:

According to a recent survey by CareerBuilder.com:

One in four managers now ‘Google’ potential employees and 51% of applications were rejected because of what was found.

When asked to divulge the types of information discovered on the Web that caused them to dismiss potential employees, hiring managers pointed to the following:

• 31% - candidate lied about qualifications
• 25% - candidate had poor communication skills
• 24% - candidate was linked to criminal behavior
• 19% - candidate bad-mouthed their previous company or fellow employee
• 19% - candidate posted information about them drinking or using drugs
• 15% - candidate shared confidential information from previous employers
• 12% - candidate lied about an absence
• 11% - candidate posted provocative or inappropriate photographs
• 8% - candidate’s screen name was unprofessional

Read more: Be careful what you write online

South Carolina League of the South