History
The principle was studied by linguist George Kingsley Zipf who wrote Human Behaviour and the Principle of Least Effort: An Introduction to Human Ecology, first published in 1949. He theorised that the distribution of word use was due to tendency to communicate efficiently with least effort and this theory is known as Zipf's Law.
Within the context of information seeking, the principle of least effort was studied by Herbert Poole who wrote Theories of the Middle Range in 1985. Librarian Thomas Mann lists the principle of least effort as one of several principles guiding information seeking behavior in his 1987 book, A Guide to Library Research Methods.
Likewise, one of the most common measures of information seeking behavior, library circulation statistics, also follows the 80-20 rule. This suggests that information seeking behavior is a manifestation not of a normal distribution curve, but a power law curve.
Read more about this topic: Principle Of Least Effort
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)