The law of small numbers may refer to
- The Law of Small Numbers (book), authored by Ladislaus Bortkiewicz
- The Poisson distribution. Sometimes probability distributions are called laws, and the use of that name for this distribution originated in the book The Law of Small Numbers
- Hasty generalization, a logical fallacy also known as 'the law of small numbers'
- the tendency for an initial segment of data to show some bias that drops out later (one example in number theory being Kummer's conjecture on cubic Gauss sums)
- Pigeonhole principle, the occurrence of mathematical coincidences
- Random sequence should reflect the proportion, in order for a sequence to be considered representative, people think that every segment of a random sequence should reflect the true proportion
- the Strong Law of Small Numbers, an observation made by the mathematician Richard K. Guy
- the Intellectual Law of Small Numbers, an observation by the sociologist Randall Collins in his book The Sociology of Philosophies
Famous quotes containing the words law of, law, small and/or numbers:
“The first law of story-telling.... Every man is bound to leave a story better than he found it.”
—Humphrey, Mrs. Ward (1851–1920)
“The one point on which all women are in furious secret rebellion against the existing law is the saddling of the right to a child with the obligation to become the servant of a man.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“You—poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are—I entreat to accept me as a husband.”
—Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855)
“The forward Youth that would appear
Must now forsake his Muses dear,
Nor in the Shadows sing
His Numbers languishing.”
—Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)