  Zipf's law is well known in linguistics: the frequency of a word is inversely
proportional to its rank. This is a special case of a more general power law, a
common phenomenon in many kinds of real-world statistical data. Here, it is
shown that snooker statistics also follow such a mathematical pattern, but with
varying (estimated) parameter values. Two types of rankings (prize money earned
and centuries scored), and three time-frames (all-time, decade, and year) are
considered. The results indicate that the power law parameter values depend on
the type of ranking used as well as the time-frame considered. Furthermore, in
some cases the resulting parameter values vary significantly over time, for
which a plausible explanation is provided.

Physics and Society