One-third hypothesis be the ones most significantly implicated in ongoing sociocultural transformation. This does not mean that these groups need to be dominant, but they play prominent roles." The OTH involves two mathematical curves. One represents the likelihood that a subgroup of a specific size will emerge; the other is the probability that it will persist. The product of the two curves is the one-third hypothesis. Statistically speaking, the group that is one-third of the population is the one most likely to persist and the group that is two-thirds the one most likely to dissolve into splinter groups, as if reacting to
One-third hypothesis One-third hypothesis The one-third hypothesis (OTH) is a sociodynamic idea—advanced by Hugo O. Engelmann—that asserts that a group's prominence increases as it approaches one-third of the population and diminishes when it exceeds or falls below one-third of the population. As the one-third hypothesis was stated originally by Hugo O. Engelmann in a letter to the "American Sociologist" in 1967: "...we would expect that the most persistent subgroups in any group would be those which approximate one-third or, by similar reasoning, a multiple of [i.e., a power of] one-third of the total group. Being the most persistent, these groups also should