[throwamon]

> I even know the percentage roughly.

No, you don't. This "principle" is not a law of physics, it's just a rule of thumb that may or may not be wildly off the mark for an arbitrary distribution. Its common usage is like statistics horoscope.

[andreilys]

Having worked as a data scientist at multiple companies (From FANG to startup), the first thing I look at when I get my hands on data is the existence of the Pareto principle.

I still haven’t found one company where this principle didn’t show up.

[throwamon]

What does this prove? If you have lots of data and dimensions, I bet you could just as likely find distributions that are roughly 50/50, 60/40, 90/10, 100/0 if you looked for them.

[dado3212]

Agreed. It’s not necessarily 80/20, it’s just that power laws show up a LOT. 90/10, 99/1, etc.

[tomp]

So you massage your features until they can produce a 20-80% split?

Very scientific.

[hbarka]

The 50/50 principle always shows up in my histogram with interval of two.