Saturday 12 February 2011

The Pareto Principle...Ahead Of The Curve...

Somewhere back there in distant sands of time, when being an economist of any note meant people named things after you, there was an Italian gent called Vilfredo Pareto who decided that there was something called the 80:20 rule (also called The Pareto Principle which sounds a bit like a Jason Bourne novel) meaning that 20% of a population controlled 80% of that population's wealth.

It would appear that this rule can be applied to all sorts of things - grains of sand, hard disk drive errors, human settlement and areas burnt in forest fires, even Project Management where apparently doing 20% of the work will produce 80% of the project benefit - and I am wondering whether this can be applied to my 50 Book Challenge.  

I am 20% of the way through (having finished book 10 this morning, Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) and have to confess a rather high hit rate in the enjoyment stakes at this early stage (90%). 

Does this mean I am ahead of the curve - with 20% of the reading generating 90% cracking reads?

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