Problems with Fitting to the Power-Law Distribution

Michel L. Goldstein, Steven A. Morris, Gary G. Yen

Published 2004-02-11, updated 2004-08-13Version 3

This short communication uses a simple experiment to show that fitting to a power law distribution by using graphical methods based on linear fit on the log-log scale is biased and inaccurate. It shows that using maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) is far more robust. Finally, it presents a new table for performing the Kolmogorov-Smirnof test for goodness-of-fit tailored to power-law distributions in which the power-law exponent is estimated using MLE. The techniques presented here will advance the application of complex network theory by allowing reliable estimation of power-law models from data and further allowing quantitative assessment of goodness-of-fit of proposed power-law models to empirical data.