Ever feel like life’s events don’t fit neatly into bell curves? In this Veritasium episode, Derek Muller dives into power laws—those funky distributions where rare outliers dominate everything from your bank account to natural disasters. By unpacking the St. Petersburg paradox, playing with sandpile and forest-fire simulations, and chatting with experts like Steven Strogatz, he shows why fractals and self-organized criticality are everywhere once you know where to look.
Along the way you’ll learn how small controlled burns stop massive wildfires, how physics models predict earthquakes, and why savvy businesses bet on blockbuster hits instead of “average” products. It’s a whirlwind tour that’ll have you rethinking the “normal” rules of the game of life.
Watch on YouTube
Top comments (0)