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# QOTD: a medium of few words
- URL: https://www.lorcandempsey.net/qotd-a-medium-of-few-words/
- Published: 2007-05-29T00:10:30.000Z
- Updated: 2020-10-28T09:33:59.000Z
- Author: Lorcan Dempsey
- Tags: Books, Misc

It has been interesting seeing how quickly the ‘long tail’ has been adopted as a phrase in a wide range of discussion and analysis. There is an article in the current *First Monday* by Kalevi Kilkki which applies a long tail model to data in several different areas. This paragraph sort of just jumped out at me! 

> Books, movies and music are typical examples of objects produced by professionals usually with the explicit purpose of earning income. Next we consider some issues with which the popularity emerges in a different manner. Wiktionary provides interesting information about the frequency of words \[[13](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency%5Flists?ref=lorcandempsey.net) LD: link added\] . The most common words in TV and in movie scripts are shown in Figure 8\. …… Indeed, only 63 words (you, I, to, … , one) are needed to make up half of everything said on TV. \[[A practical model for analyzing long tails](https://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12%5F5/kilkki/index.html?ref=lorcandempsey.net)\]

Note: I discussed the long tail and libraries in an article in D-Lib Magazine a while ago: [Libraries and the Long Tail: Some Thoughts about Libraries in a Network Age](https://www.dlib.org/dlib/april06/dempsey/04dempsey.html?ref=lorcandempsey.net). D-Lib Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 4, April 2006.