About Pareto
Vilfredo Pareto (Vilfredo Pareto, 2015) “was an Italian engineer, sociologist, economist, political scientist, and philosopher ” that published his major works around the early 1900s (1897 to 1916). He actually did not publish or promote the Pareto Principle. Nop! He was way too busy with more important economic and sociological problems, including helping develop the field of microeconomics.
However, Pareto did show that approximately 80% of the land in Italy at the time was owned by 20% of the population. He also developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas! Go figure…
So if it wasn’t Pareto, how did the principle come about?
The Pareto Principle
The “Pareto Principle” as a term was actually suggested and named by Joseph M. Juran (Joseph M. Juran , 2015) in 1941. Juran started applying the principle to quality issues after stumbling across Pareto’s work and observing the 80% problems are caused by 20% of the causes.
Hence the other common name of the principle as the 80–20 rule: 80% of effects comes from 20% of causes.
One caveat: be sure to remember that Juran later on preferred to call the rule “the vital few and the useful many” to clearly indicate that the remaining 80% of the causes should not be totally ignored.
Bibliography
Vilfredo Pareto. (2015, April 1). Retrieved April 19, 2015, from Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vilfredo_Pareto&oldid=654508672
Joseph M. Juran . (2015, March 20). Retrieved April 19, 2015, from Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joseph_M._Juran&oldid=652691041
Newman, M. (2008, February 2). Power laws, Pareto Distributions, and Zipf’s law (PDF). Retrieved April 19, 2015, from Cornell University Library: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/cond-mat/pdf/0412/0412004v3.pdf
Pareto principle . (2015, April 7). Retrieved April 19, 2015, from Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. : http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pareto_principle&oldid=655271336