Power Laws: How Nonlinear Relationships Amplify Results - Farnam Street

This brief guide on power laws covers what they are and how we can use them to expand our understanding of the world and get better results.

Mental Models | Reading Time: 15 minutes Power Laws: How Nonlinear Relationships Amplify Results “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” — Albert Allen Bartlett Defining A Power Law Consider a person who begins weightlifting for the first time. During their initial sessions, they can lift only a small amount of weight. But as they invest more time, they find that for each training session, their strength increases a surprising amount. For a while, they make huge improvements. Eventually, however, their progress slows down. At first,

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