Some Monte Carlo Estimates of the Yule Distribution

Abstract : This paper presents some Monte Carlo simulations of the Yule process, viewed as a stochastic process for generating the frequency distributions of words in text. In the first part, data are presented for the case, which cannot be solved analytically in closed form, where the rate at which new words enter the text is variable. In the second part, Monte Carlo simulations are compared with two sets of data where both the empirical frequency distributions and the actual rate at which words enter the text are known. (Author)