The Pareto Principle

Authors

Rosie Dunford, University of Plymouth
Quanrong Su, University of Plymouth
Ekraj Tamang, University of Plymouth
Abigail Wintour, University of Plymouth

Document Type

Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Article

Abstract

The Pareto Principle (also known as the 80-20 rule) states that for many phenomena, about 80% of the consequences are produced by 20% of the causes. In this article we discuss the Pareto Principle and its importance in real life problems, describe some mathematical model related to it and also address the concept of the Lorenz curve and Gini coefficient. We tested two sets of real life data to see if the Pareto principle applies to these aspects. For the Forbes list in 2012, we found that 20% of the richest people own 56.72% of the money. For the world Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2011, 20% of the richest countries in the world have 91.62% of the total amount of money.

Publication Date

2014-07-01

Publication Title

The Plymouth Student Scientist

Volume

7

Issue

1

First Page

140

Last Page

148

ISSN

1754-2383

Deposit Date

May 2019

Embargo Period

2024-07-03

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/14054

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Dunford, Rosie; Su, Quanrong; Tamang, Ekraj; and Wintour, Abigail (2014) "The Pareto Principle," The Plymouth Student Scientist: Vol. 7: Iss. 1, Article 4.
Available at: https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/tpss/vol7/iss1/4