Taylor's Power Law Re-Examined

A reappraisal of the evidence originally cited in support of Taylor's Power Law shows no unique advantage to the family of power curves, σ 2 =aμ b , over the family of quadratic curves, σ 2 =a 1 μ+a 2 μ 2 . In addition, the Power Law is shown to perform poorly in predicting the variance for means close to 0. Errors in statistical procedures based on these flawed variance predictions are shown to be substantial