THE DREAM IN ACTION

Very interesting challenge of/addition to Pareto's law. I'm going to
continue to think about this!
Thanks Walt!

Actually, yes I think it can. It might be 20% of your client attention that leads to 80% of profits. If you have some percentage of invisible clients (ignored, whether for good or bad), they contribute neither to cause nor effect.

There are a lot of "80/20" rules, but given the context of Pareto's specific cause/effect relationship, I think it's definitely a good idea to look for how much of the pie is zero cause, zero effect.

About your domain change, it looks like your redirect from the old domain is set up to send all URLs to the root URL here. That's breaking a lot of your old links, including Disqus comment links. Email me at waltjones@gmail.com and I'll see if I can help you.

Shoot, otherss had that issue also let's me know if you know how to fix that.

I totally agree with your thought here. Can this be applied to other
Pareto analysis like evaluating profitability of clients? 20% of
clients lead to 80%of profits, but only clients who ______ should be
counted?

In your statistic above, I think the reason 1% accounts for 23% of income is that only about 10% of all people are actually trying to increase their income. (I'm just guessing at that number.)

I don't think we have a winner take all economy. I do think the cause/effect analysis should be limited to those that are actually attempting to have a causal effect.

Again, good article. I think you fell off my RSS when your domain name changed. This is a good reminder to get you back in there. :)

Reading back through some old comments and I wanted to comment on this one.

It sounds like there is a questioning of the %'s in Pareto's law. Looking at the 80% of waste, maybe some of this should even be considered.
Of the overall 100% only 70% participate so his law should be more like 5% causes 65% of the 70% that is "active". Is this right?

Very interesting challenge of/addition to Pareto's law. I'm going to
continue to think about this!
Thanks Walt!

Actually, yes I think it can. It might be 20% of your client attention that leads to 80% of profits. If you have some percentage of invisible clients (ignored, whether for good or bad), they contribute neither to cause nor effect.

There are a lot of "80/20" rules, but given the context of Pareto's specific cause/effect relationship, I think it's definitely a good idea to look for how much of the pie is zero cause, zero effect.

About your domain change, it looks like your redirect from the old domain is set up to send all URLs to the root URL here. That's breaking a lot of your old links, including Disqus comment links. Email me at waltjones@gmail.com and I'll see if I can help you.

Shoot, otherss had that issue also let's me know if you know how to fix that.

I totally agree with your thought here. Can this be applied to other
Pareto analysis like evaluating profitability of clients? 20% of
clients lead to 80%of profits, but only clients who ______ should be
counted?

In your statistic above, I think the reason 1% accounts for 23% of income is that only about 10% of all people are actually trying to increase their income. (I'm just guessing at that number.)

I don't think we have a winner take all economy. I do think the cause/effect analysis should be limited to those that are actually attempting to have a causal effect.

Again, good article. I think you fell off my RSS when your domain name changed. This is a good reminder to get you back in there. :)

Reading back through some old comments and I wanted to comment on this one.

It sounds like there is a questioning of the %'s in Pareto's law. Looking at the 80% of waste, maybe some of this should even be considered.
Of the overall 100% only 70% participate so his law should be more like 5% causes 65% of the 70% that is "active". Is this right?

Ryan,

I stopped by here because I saw your comment over at mashable.

This post reminded me of this chart:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_ine...

And leads me to wonder: if Pareto's law is about the ratio of cause to effect, what can then be said about the distribution of cause itself, or in other words, participation. I wonder how many in the bottom 50% are simply not participating at all, rather than participating with little effect?

Anyway, great stuff to think about and use!