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:
“Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)