powerlaw is a toolbox using the statistical methods developed in Clauset et al. 2007 and Klaus et al. 2011 to determine if a probability distribution fits a power law. Academics, please cite as:

Jeff Alstott, Ed Bullmore, Dietmar Plenz. (2014). powerlaw: a Python package for analysis of heavy-tailed distributions. PLoS ONE 9(1): e85777

Also available at arXiv:1305.0215 [physics.data-an]

Basic Usage

For the simplest, typical use cases, this tells you everything you need to know.:

import powerlaw
data = array([1.7, 3.2 ...]) # data can be list or numpy array
results = powerlaw.Fit(data)
print results.power_law.alpha
print results.power_law.xmin
R, p = results.distribution_compare('power_law', 'lognormal')

For more explanation, understanding, and figures, see the working paper, which illustrates all of powerlaw’s features. For details of the math, see Clauset et al. 2007, which developed these methods.

Quick Links

Installation

Paper illustrating all of powerlaw’s features, with figures

Code examples from manuscript, as an IPython Notebook

Documentation

Known Issues

Update Notifications, Mailing List, and Contacts

This code was developed and tested for Python 2.x with the Enthought Python Distribution, and later amended to be compatible with 3.x. The full version of Enthought is available for free for academic use.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Andreas Klaus, Mika Rubinov and Shan Yu for helpful discussions. Thanks also to Andreas Klaus, Aaron Clauset, Cosma Shalizi, and Adam Ginsburg for making their code available. Their implementations were a critical starting point for making powerlaw.

Release files for powerlaw 1.3.4

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for powerlaw 1.3.4
File	Size	Uploaded
powerlaw-1.3.4.tar.gz	23.0 kB	Apr 2, 2015	Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for powerlaw 1.3.4
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
powerlaw-1.3.4.macosx-10.5-x86_64.exe 86.7 kB Apr 2, 2015				Details

Total release size: 109.6 kB

Release files / powerlaw-1.3.4.tar.gz

Download URL	powerlaw-1.3.4.tar.gz
Size	23.0 kB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`f027defe034fb0742cd5e446625f1736388fe1ffbeb886654697546858d052c0`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`fa6cf09b970074b73589e13f616fd954fb66d5182f088ac455aa59d54830d294`
Upload date	Apr 2, 2015
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No

Release files / powerlaw-1.3.4.macosx-10.5-x86_64.exe

Download URL	powerlaw-1.3.4.macosx-10.5-x86_64.exe
Size	86.7 kB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`2ee1a2a874ce9b14634d0dd80af0d4bfe46aa23312b282c239e4b9b86026a319`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`222b646a43b8c17112bc2cdc2e3e5c19c4a7649f187282c0cb1e35be4fd438dd`
Upload date	Apr 2, 2015
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No