Probably a year or more ago I compared some data on FOIA request processing times reported by US government agencies against an exponential distribution (not power law). I used the given mean and compared the predicted median against the actual median. Was acceptable as far as I was concerned, though I'd have to redo the analysis to actually get quantitative.
With a power law there's no mean or median starting at t = 0, so this sort of comparison isn't possible given the FOIA request data available. I'd be interested in seeing the data on the tails to see if those are power law distributed.
With a power law there's no mean or median starting at t = 0, so this sort of comparison isn't possible given the FOIA request data available. I'd be interested in seeing the data on the tails to see if those are power law distributed.
Edit: I'll do a quick quantitative check. Using data from the CIA's 2018 FOIA report (p. 18): https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/foia-annual-report
Simple track:
Mean: 32.21 days
Median: 12 days (exponential prediction: 22.33 days, 86% error)
Complex track:
Mean: 368.49 days
Median: 306 days (exponential prediction: 255.42 days, 17% error)
Not the best fit but could be worse.