Zipf's Law and 7 Plus Minus 2 Principle Lead to a Possible Explanation of Daniel's Law

Authors

Olga Kosheleva, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Vladik Kreinovich, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow

Publication Date

1-2014

Comments

Technical Report: UTEP-CS-14-01

Published in International Mathematical Forum, 2014, Vol. 9, No. 8, pp. 391-396.

Abstract

In 1961, D. R. Daniel observed that the success of a company is usually determined by three to six major factors. This observation has led to many successful management ideas, but they leave one puzzled: why three to six? why not two or seven? In this paper, we provide a possible explanation to this puzzle; namely, we show that these numbers of factors can be derived from Zipf's Law and from the 7 plus minus 2 principle.