# Dirichlet draws are sparse with high probability

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1301.4917 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1301.4917/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 21 Jan 2013.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Improving application performance with biased distributions of quantum states](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07642/) (2021)
- [Calibrating Uncertainty for Zero-Shot Adversarial CLIP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.12997/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This note provides an elementary proof of the folklore fact that draws from a Dirichlet distribution (with parameters less than 1) are typically sparse (most coordinates are small).