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Tue 24 Aug, 2004 10:04 am
I was looking at the medal table for the current Athens games, and was wondering if there was a better way to determine which countries have performed well. I've devised the following to test my theory that the bloody Aussies will top any list.
I have taken the population of the country, and divided it by the number of 'Olympic Points' scored in the current games to give an 'Olympic Rating'. 'Olympic Points' are calculated from the medal table, but Gold scores 3, Silver scores 2 and Bronze scores 1 point.
The Olympic Rating is therefore the amount of population required to score 1 Olympic Point. The higher the score, the worse (comparatively) the country has performed. This evens out differences between large and small countries.
Here's the (abridged) results, using the medal table at close of play yesterday (23-8-04). The figure in the 2nd column is the Olympic Rating (see above)
1 - 281,885 - Australia
2 - 387,135 - Slovenia
3 - 456,609 - Hungary
4 - 469,519 - Estonia
5 - 493,639 - Slovakia
6 - 507,904 - Greece
7 - 556,914 - Netherlands
8 - 573,453 - Belarus
9 - 579,841 - Bulgaria
10 - 616,802 - Georgia
11 - 658,551 - New Zealand
21 - 1,104,209 - Trinidad & Tobago
25 - 1,203,611 - France
26 - 1,348,787 - Italy
27 - 1,365,787 - United Kingdom
29 - 1,498,151 - Germany
30 - 1,817,350 - Japan
33 - 2,094,124 - Russia
35 - 2,103,932 - USA
36 - 2,234,301 - Spain
44 - 3,220,711 - Canada
58 - 11,594,374 - China
63 - 36,406,521 - Brazil
What does this all tell us? Maybe nothing. Maybe that the bloody Aussies are the best Olympians? And that the Eastern Europeans aren't far behind? And that some of the so-called sporting superpowers aren't as good as they like to believe?
I plan to develop this idea further, mainly because I like numbers.
Any comments, suggestions, abuse etc. please post whatever!
Those stats are interesting.
However, matching by population can be deceptive, for different reasons. Among them:
1. Several team medals are awarded, and a country cannot have two teams in the same event.
2. A similar thing happens with individual events. There's a limit by nationality. How many Ethiopians would run the marathon or the 10,000 meters? How many boxers -or how many "amateur" baseball teams- could Cuba place?
3. Sometimes an exceptional athlete from a very tiny country means a big change. If we look at the historical data, the number 1 sport country in the world is Litchtenstein.
4. Some sports give a lot of medals to the very same athlete. Like swimming and gymnastics (Rumania's big take). Or a single sport (Judo, for the Japanese; boxing for the Cubans). The best Olympic country should excell in several sports.
All this said, I agree with Grand Duke. Aussies are the top olympians. They're competitive is just about everything.
Thanks for the input, fbaezer. Any ideas how to improve the analysis? For pure, interest, I'm going to re-run the numbers, but using GDP rather than population. Perhaps the 'wealth' of a county is more important than the size of it's population?
I would be interested in GDP - but the USA, at the very least, is wealthier per capita, than Oz.
It's weird, eh?
I was going to say that money, more than population, may be the key determinant. But the GDP analysis may just cover that issue.
I suspect a combination of the two might be more accurate; but this is excellent research. A tip of the headdress to you, Grand Duke!
Income distribution must be a factor, too.
And cultural and geographic elements also count. Expect Ethiopia and Kenya, on one side, and India, on the other, to be outlyers.
The relations between the country's population and the medals they have got.
or proportion.
I think that is why Austrlia is at the top and Brazil and us are at the bottom.
This is very interesting. I haven't had chance to read it properly but first impressions are that they've done a good job. I'm still carrying on with my own research though!
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