Dear Miranda,

The 80/20 Rule means that in any set of things (workers, customers, etc.) a few (20 percent) are vital and many (80 percent) are considered trivial.

We can use it in our research by first prioritizing important tasks and then concentrating on these trivial tasks.

I do observe this Pareto principle working. So now I'm thinking 'Should I use this rule of thumb to spend more energy on the vital few things that count?' I wonder if by amplifying what counts, we will amplify our impact.

Dear Miranda

Pareto principle “80 percent of contribution comes from 20 percent of the potential contribution available” has been found accurate in a majority of fields.

“The Pareto Principle is a model or theory, and an extremely useful model at that. It has endless applications – in management, social study and demographics, all types of distribution analysis, and business and financial planning and evaluation.”

Now that you ask this question, Miranda that is true with my research as well.

http://time-managementzone.com/the-pareto-principle-pareto-law-aka-the-8020-rule/

Dear Miranda. Another important issue from you. Thanks for sharing.

I totally agree with Nageswara's comment.

Best regards,

JP

Dear Miranda,

The 80/20 Rule means that in any set of things (workers, customers, etc.) a few (20 percent) are vital and many (80 percent) are considered trivial.

We can use it in our research by first prioritizing important tasks and then concentrating on these trivial tasks.

Thanks for your posts, greatly appreciated. Let's wait for others to post their views, and make this into a valuable thread.

Pareto Principle is based on Pareto Distribution. In many cases seems to work as a rule of thump. Thinking a little deeper I wonder if this principle has anything to do with the structure of our society. Suppose that this structure is changed. Should this invalidate the principle?

The Pareto principle, the seemingly incontrovertible dictum that if all individuals prefer some regime to another then so should society, may conflict with competing principles. Arrow’s impossibility theorem and Sen’s liberal paradox are two notable examples. Subsequent work indicates more broadly that the Pareto principle conflicts with all nonwelfarist principles. This essay surveys these results, including various extensions thereof, and offers perspectives on the conflict, drawing on classical and contemporary work in political economy and economic

psychology.http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/pdf/Kaplow_519.pdf

The principle of 80/20. Yes I do in some of my researches. This rule does not apply to all my researches.

Dear Miranda

I agree with Behrouz Ahmadi-Nedushan’s opinion. However, everything in our world depends on the efficiency and effectiveness of work productivity. You should compromise between the 2 concepts to achieve optimum solution. The Pareto Principle is still valid to a certain extent but not to those people who are hard worker, strive for excellence, elite and their potential is high.

I appreciate all your views.

@ Costas, you say:

'Thinking a little deeper I wonder if this principle has anything to do with the structure of our society...'

I think so. I observe that 20 % of the staff are working hard to produce 80 - 100 % of the work in some organizations. And the ones who are so free gather together to chat about their salary and surf for the next venue to tour...

Dear Miranda, the answer to your question 'Should I use this rule of thumb to spend more energy on the vital few things that count?' is a resounding 'Yes': it is usually the most effective strategy to dedicate most of your time to doing things at which you are the best AND which bring you most satisfaction and recognition.

@Adel, @Artur et al., thanks for your posts. I was busy preparing a report on the satisfaction of clients (students) concerning our orientation week, and just finished.

@Adel: we all learn many things by trial and error. Being a quick learner is great.

Thanks to all of you.

In image analysis and feature extraction for computer vision a very small ratio of data that count while the rest of the image is redundant data.

In dimensionality reduction using PCA or LDA only prominent data remain the rest is removed.

In signal analysis using Fourier, DCT, Wavelet transforms only small amount of the signal remain the rest can be removed

In decision tree for machine learning, information gain is used to keep only the decisive features to build the best tree that result the best prediction.

The list is very long in all fields related to computer science.

However, as far as i know, the exact 20% relevant data to 80% irrelevant data is not proved yet in the previous domains. I think this deserve more attention and further investigations.

If this principle applied on energy consuming, and we find out that all humans need only 20% of energy, while 80% is waste, this might be the solution for Global warming problem. identify the wast and avoid it.

To improve your teaching, identify the 20% of the students who have got a good handle on what can be improved.

@Ahmad Hassanat and @Ian, thanks for info and advice. I'm not sure we will always get an exact 80:20 ratio. But what I found was that after a year of teaching my students 20 % become independent learners and potential life long learners. From the remaining 80 %, there is a much smaller percentage who refuse to part with their rote learning before exams...

Maybe this principle is already working in RG! Could someone provide some statistics about number of active participants in the discussions, about quality of responses made to each questions, etc.

@Mahmoud Omid, it's Prof Ljubomir Jacic who has some statistics. He has a thread on whether we know our followers and those we follow. He is more organized about these things than I am. So you think 20 % of RG members are active? What about the rest, what do you all think?

The Pareto principle is used for optimization and excellence as well as well for filtering useful data.

This principle could be used also in teaching; i remember, when i was student this principle was used ie. Student couldn't pass to the upper grade if all (s)his notes are not 80% of the mean of (s)his group, unless he should pass exams.

I have not done any analysis of this type, but it seems reasonable for me, since it is based on the power law, the most general that you can find in many-many fields. It seems to be a universal law and probably we should study its success in more details. Interesting ...

In the UK, research is assessed very several years by government via Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) not beyond 2008 and then by Research Eecellence Framework after 2008. I do not feel the sophisiticated rules follow this ratio.

Dear Miranda

Yes, I feel that it is largely true. We always do things that are critical as well as those not so critical for attaining our vision and goals. Often, as is envisaged by Pareto principle, we do both sets of things for various reasons. But all our actions are not really critical for our success; some are. that is where the Pareto principle holds good. It definitely applies to me.

Yes, Prof Debi and friends. Sometimes we need to wake up to the fact that certain things are not so good for us. And we must let go, to free our minds and time for the things that will be of more value...let's wait for other views.

Dear Miranda,

The significance of the first Welfare theorem (First theorem of Welfare economics) is that it guarantees that a competitive equilibrium will be Pareto efficient. However, the first Welfare theorem says nothing about the distribution of economic benefits among the agents of a society. That is it says nothing about the distributive effects of the allocation.

In this point interesting question is "If we have a Pareto efficient allocation, can we find the set of prices so that this equilibrium is also the competitive or market equilibrium?" The answer depends on the individual preferences.

The second Welfare theorem (Second theorem of Welfare economics) says that if all agents have convex preferences, then there will be always a set of prices such that each Pareto efficient allocation is market equilibrium for an appropriate assignment of endowments.

A useful tool in general equilibrium analysis is the Edgeworth Box used to analyze the trading of goods. It merges the indifference map between the parties in the trade by inverting one of the agents diagram and allows us to see whether an allocation is Pareto optimal. All individuals maximize their utility.

In that manner we can state and solve the market-clearing equilibrium in principle and we can determine the contract curve and the Walrasian set in the Edgeworth box. The set of the Walrasian equilibriums and the appropriate prices are calculated based on the determined demand utility (value) functions and this is a meaningful prognosis of the market equilibrium. In that way can be forecast the competitive market equilibrium allocations and the appropriate prices.

The contract curves are specified on the individual consumers’ preferences and show that there are possibilities to be made mutually advantageous trades. This means that one could unilaterally negotiate a better arrangement for everyone; this is a Pareto point in the “contract curve”.

Pareto Analysis is used for setting priorities, since you concentrate on the 20% of inputs which create 80% of output. In addition to researches, Pareto Analysis can be used also in Teaching and in analyzing students problems.

Dear friends, Profs Mahfuz, Yuri, Debi et al., for the last few years, I worked hard at teaching and research. Each year I managed to get about 20% of possible lifelong learners - Pareto ratio!

I used various 'ways' to facilitate my students' learning: mnemonics, collaborative learning, self directed learning, motivation. I enjoyed doing all that. But In terms of research output, I have only 1 paper on collaborative learning, and 4 on mnemonics. The rest are still INCUBATING and not yet ready. Pareto ratio again!

Is it just a coincidence? Now you see the need to ask this Q. As with other Qs that I asked, there is a real need to ask your views! Thanks.

I agree with you Kamal. Some distributions reflect the structure of our society and since society changes rapidly, one expects that this distributions would not express real data. Then a problem is posed by itself: Is there a Pareto stochastic process, which follow the changes of our society?

The 80/20 Rule means that in anything a few (20 percent) are vital and many(80 percent) are trivial. In some cases, the percentages may be a little bit different.

@Kamal: I think this principle is true for our generation, but for the new generation it may be 10/90 ratio!!!

and @Costas: Some distributions reflect the structure of our society and since society changes rapidly, one expects that this distributions would not express real data.

The following  paper arrives at a surprising conclusion:

S. Ellis, Abandoning the Pareto principle, University of Oklahoma:

http://www.ou.edu/ouphil/faculty/ellis/Abandoning.pdf

Basically, Ellis points out that there are problems with using preference as a foundation for an indication of well-being.

Recent work indicates that the PP is misleading.   The existence of a Pareto index does not guarantee well being on many views of the good.   The PP presupposes both a subjectivist account of welfare and a subjectivist account of what counts as progress toward welfare (p. 14).

Thanks Prof James and friends.  I will read the link, thanks.  Please give us info that you receive even when contradictory :)

On reviewing Miranda Yeoh 's question 4 years later: The usual research approach is to analyse all responses. Miranda has pointed out that in practice 80% of the useful info is contained in 20% of the responses. Also,

in one's researching, 80% of ones "good stuff" is contained in 20% of one's papers. ResearchGate tries to identify the top 20% through popularity feedback voting so that ones "best of" papers percolate to the top of one's reprints.