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Estimation in the Power Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Hoben Thomas
Hoben Thomas*
Affiliation:
The Pennsylvania State University
*
Requests for reprints should be sent to Hoben Thomas, 513 Moore Building, University Park, PA 16802.
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Abstract

Most psychophysicists neglect to consider how error should be characterized in applications of the power law. Failures of the power law to agree with certain theoretical predictions may be due to bias of parameter estimates. A power law with lognormal product structure is proposed and approximately unbiased parameter estimates are given for several common estimation situations.

Keywords

power law estimationpsychophysicsestimation power law
Type
Original Paper
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 1981 , pp. 29 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 The Psychometric Society

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Footnotes

The author thanks Steven F. Arnold for helpful comments.

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