Amy Wesolowski

Research Abstract

Project Title: Parameter Estimation Methods for Specialized Power-Law Distributions Student: Amy Wesolowski Project Mentor: Aaron Clauset

Power-law distributions occur in many natural and man-made phenomena. However, methodologies to detect and characterize power-laws in empirical data are notoriously complicated. Recently, Clauset, Shalizi, and Newman combined maximum-likelihood methods, Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistics, and likelihood ratios to identify power-law distributions in the tail of a distribution. We are extending this framework to other power-law distributions including those falling within a finite range and resulting from binned data.