Oxford occupies a similar power law position in the UK
Does it?
The numbers in this newspaper article from 2013 suggest that (1) Cambridge has a substantial advantage over Oxford in total alumnar wealth (as opposed to number of wealthy alumni/ae) and (2) there are other rivals not all that far behind. I wouldn’t want to make a large bet that there isn’t a power-law distribution there, but it certainly doesn’t seem much like the alleged US situation with Harvard alumni/ae twice as rich as any other university’s.
[EDITED to add: It appears that these numbers come from the same organization as the Harvard ones.]
It doesn’t look like the same power law. The #alumni figures for UK universities go 401, 361, 273, 127, 106, 99. The figures for US universities go 2964, 1502, 1174, 889, 828, 658, 581, 568. The US figures drop hugely from #1 to #2 to #3. The UK figures don’t.
(If you pretend that Oxford and Cambridge are in fact a single university, then you do get a nice power law fit with a much more negative exponent than for the US figures. But, as it happens, they are two different universities.)
Does it?
The numbers in this newspaper article from 2013 suggest that (1) Cambridge has a substantial advantage over Oxford in total alumnar wealth (as opposed to number of wealthy alumni/ae) and (2) there are other rivals not all that far behind. I wouldn’t want to make a large bet that there isn’t a power-law distribution there, but it certainly doesn’t seem much like the alleged US situation with Harvard alumni/ae twice as rich as any other university’s.
[EDITED to add: It appears that these numbers come from the same organization as the Harvard ones.]
Right, in the UK they call it “Oxridge.” But if you plot the histogram it will probably look like the power law also.
I’ve always heard it as “Oxbridge.”
It doesn’t look like the same power law. The #alumni figures for UK universities go 401, 361, 273, 127, 106, 99. The figures for US universities go 2964, 1502, 1174, 889, 828, 658, 581, 568. The US figures drop hugely from #1 to #2 to #3. The UK figures don’t.
(If you pretend that Oxford and Cambridge are in fact a single university, then you do get a nice power law fit with a much more negative exponent than for the US figures. But, as it happens, they are two different universities.)
That is interesting (although we would have to do a goodness of fit test).