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:
“It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“The custard is setting; meanwhile
I not only have my own history to worry about
But am forced to fret over insufficient details related to large
Unfinished concepts that can never bring themselves to the point
Of being, with or without my help, if any were forthcoming.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)