It's distributions all the way down!: Second order changes in statistical distributions also occur

Abstract

The textual, big-data literature misses Bentley, OBrien, & Brocks (Bentley et als) message on distributions; it largely examines the first-order effects of how a single, signature distribution can predict population behaviour, neglecting second-order effects involving distributional shifts, either between signature distributions or within a given signature distribution. Indeed, Bentley et al. themselves under-emphasise the potential richness of the latter, within-distribution effects.