If it were a normal distribution, then the Average Rule would give a pretty clear forecast of how long he could expect to live: about eight months. But if it were a power-law, with a tail that stretches far out to the right, then the situation would be quite different: the Multiplicative Rule would tell him that the longer he lived, the more evidence it would provide that he would live longer. Reading further, Gould discovered that “the distribution was indeed, strongly right skewed, with a long tail (however small) that extended for several years above the eight month median. I saw no reason
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