%0 Journal Article
%@ 1539-3755
%A Caldarelli, Guido
%A Caretta Cartozo, Cécile 
%A De Los Rios, Paolo
%A Servedio, Vito D. P.
%D 2004
%F eprints:1128
%I American Physical Society
%J Physical Review E
%K PACS: 89.75.Fb, 89.75.Hc, 05.40.-a, 05.65.+b
%N 3
%T Widespread occurrence of the inverse square distribution in social sciences and taxonomy
%U http://eprints.imtlucca.it/1128/
%V 69
%X The widespread occurrence of an inverse square relation in the hierarchical distribution of subcommunities within communities (or subspecies within species) has been recently invoked as a signature of hierarchical self-organization within social and ecological systems. Here we show that, whether such systems are self-organized or not, this behavior is the consequence of the treelike classification method. Different treelike classifications (both of real and truly random systems) display a similar statistical behavior when considering the sizes of their sub-branches.