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IlyaShpitser comments on Why are Harvard's alumni so wealthy? - Less Wrong Discussion

11 Post author: JonahSinick 15 March 2014 06:47PM

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Comment author: IlyaShpitser 17 March 2014 02:44:11PM 0 points [-]

Right, in the UK they call it "Oxridge." But if you plot the histogram it will probably look like the power law also.

Comment author: knb 28 March 2014 04:42:03AM 2 points [-]

I've always heard it as "Oxbridge."

Comment author: gjm 17 March 2014 05:34:15PM 1 point [-]

It doesn't look like the same power law. The #alumni figures for UK universities go 401, 361, 273, 127, 106, 99. The figures for US universities go 2964, 1502, 1174, 889, 828, 658, 581, 568. The US figures drop hugely from #1 to #2 to #3. The UK figures don't.

(If you pretend that Oxford and Cambridge are in fact a single university, then you do get a nice power law fit with a much more negative exponent than for the US figures. But, as it happens, they are two different universities.)

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 19 March 2014 02:37:47PM 0 points [-]

That is interesting (although we would have to do a goodness of fit test).