Linked

Albert-Laszlo Barabasi compares the linked nature of the web to the rest of our world.  Web hubs and links are not created equal.  Web link traffic like income distribution and job performance follow a power law curve and not a bell curve distribution.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2014/02/19/the-myth-of-the-bell-curve-look-for-the-hyper-performers/

A bell Curve distribution would assume that traffic to websites would only have a few sites with high number of hits and a few sites with a low number of hits.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2014/02/19/the-myth-of-the-bell-curve-look-for-the-hyper-performers/

The power law distribution shows a few websites (Google, Amazon) having a lot of traffic and many websites (personal, research) having little or no traffic.


US income distribution (click on image to enlarge)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States

This also has implications for disease management. In the spread of STD's there are individuals who have 1000's of partners and controlling their behavior or contacts has a much greater impact than focusing on individuals with one or two partners.

TED talk - linked theory in disease managment