also: ジフのほうそく
expression, noun
Zipf's law
A statistical principle in linguistics and mathematics stating that the frequency of a word is inversely proportional to its rank in a frequency table.
ジップの法則によれば、最も頻繁に使われる単語は二番目に頻繁な単語の約二倍使われる。
According to Zipf's law, the most frequent word is used about twice as often as the second most frequent word.
Named after the American linguist George Kingsley Zipf. The Japanese form ジップの法則 is a direct translation of 'Zipf's law'.