A quantity of interesting in Percolation theory is the distribution of sizes for the small clusters in percolation models.
This can be quantified by the total number of clusters of size , . Sometimes one works with instead, to eliminate the scaling with that would make as .
One can also work with the probability that a random node belongs to a cluster of size , which can be easily seen to be . This is clearly the probability of picking a node inside a cluster of size given a particular network configuration. In the case of Percolation on random graphs and networks, it's also the probability that a random network configuration (following the appropriate probability distribution defining the network ensemble) makes a particular chosen node be in a cluster of size . This is because the two operations are statistically independent.
can be shown to decrease exponentially with s in the subcritical regime, and it decays more slowly in the supercritical regime. (see here). At the critical point, the cluster size follows a power law distribution (as do for instance avalanche sizes in the sandpile model at criticality).