
Olympic Medal Count, Adjusted for Population and GDP - aggieben
http://www.symworld.com/medals/index.php?sort=gold
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brk
I didn't really see anything of value in this dataset. What I found more
interesting is that someone took the time to put it all together in the first
place.

At the risk of sounding overly negative, I don't really get what the hype
about the Olympics, or professional sports is all about. People seem to put a
lot of time/effort into watching, tracking, following various sports, but I
don't see what the benefit is to being a rabid spectator. It's not like more
gold medals == some improvement to society or economy. Same thing when one
random sports team bests another in some championship or tournament, no
measurable increase (save for the increased revenue to sports paraphernalia
dealers).

~~~
Locke
This is an interesting view point for someone on Hacker News, considering the
way we follow tech startups here...

I'm a lifelong sports fan. Only in my mid 20's did I start becoming interested
in business. One of the first things I noticed is how similar the business
page is to the sports page. People follow companies like they're sports teams,
gathering detailed statistics (profit, market cap, etc), analyzing match-ups
(Microsoft vs Yahoo), discussing all-stars (Steve Jobs), etc.

Techcrunch is our Sports Illustrated.

~~~
brk
I am on HN because I am an active hacker and startup junkie. I might have
similar feelings about the Olympics and professional sports if I participated
in those activities AND could draw useful data to help my personal endeavors.

Being that an in depth knowledge of football and related player stats gives me
no benefit or edge in my pursuits, I choose not to dedicate time that could be
better spent actively doing or learning on spectating.

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ars
It's interesting but I can not find any correlation at all. So I'd guess the
conclusion is that olympic medals have nothing to do with population size or
money.

Instead it has everything to do with if the country cares or not. India
clearly doesn't.

~~~
ajross
There's a slight anti-correlation with population size. Large nations with
conventionally "successful" olympic programs (USA, China, Russia) are well
below median in medals per capita.

My guess is that this is because there's an upper limit on entrants. The USA
and China might be much more likely to _get_ medals, but they're still limited
to three per event at maximum. There might be events where a big nation (China
and diving comes to mind) might be able to get even more medals, but can't
because they only have so many slots.

~~~
timr
That's the noise you'd expect from a random process. Any country with an
Olympic program has some chance of earning a medal. Thus, given a sufficiently
large number of small countries, you'd expect that a random subset of those
nations would earn a higher number of medals _per capita_ than the big
players. That Jamaica is at the top of the list is a decent example -- without
the unexpected, astronomical weirdness of Usain Bolt, they'd have half as many
golds.

The larger programs have a greater number of chances to win, but normalizing
by GDP or national population doesn't tell you anything about the overall
probability of an athlete from country X winning a medal (which is arguably
what you want to know). To get that information, you'd have to normalize by
something else -- like size of team, or program expenditure, or some factor
that's more directly related to athletics than GDP or population.

~~~
dejb
Yes I agree. To make the list statistically valid you should probably only
look at those countries with more than say 15 or 20 medals. I wonder who comes
out on top then? :)

~~~
whatusername
More than 15 total medals. Looking at GDP per Medal.

* Cuba ------- 1,879

* Belarus ------- 2,038

* Ukraine ------- 5,204

* Russia ------- 17,861

* Australia ------- 19,341

* South Korea ------- 31,674

* China ------- 32,990

* Netherlands ------- 47,181

* Great Britain ------- 59,000

* France ------- 62,875

* Italy ------- 73,857

* Canada ------- 78,111

* Spain ------- 78,611

* Germany ------- 79,488

* United States ------- 125,364

* Japan ------- 173,840

Who were expecting on top?

~~~
dejb
I suspect you are deliberately missing the point for the purposes of mischief.
I was talking about the population ones which would go like this

Population Gold

* Australia ---- 1,528,165

* Netherlands ---- 2,349,286

* Belarus ---- 2,422,500

* Great Britain ----- 3,052,632

* South Korea ----- 3,709,538

Population Medals

* Australia ----- 465,094

* Cuba ------ 469,500

* Belarus ----- 510,000

Huge Gap ....

* Netherlands ----- 1,027,813

Anything stand out to you about these? :)

~~~
whatusername
To be honest - I was trying to prove that point with the GDP figures.. (but
the pesky actual data got in the way)...

Good to see that Population proves it out though!

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dpatru
Zimbabwe, with GDP 0, is first for medals per GDP. One of the few benefits of
living under Mugabe.

~~~
jfarmer
Infinity points!

~~~
hsuresh
Not infinity. It is undefined. :)

~~~
jfarmer
I work in projective space.

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geebee
Does a team event count as only a single medal? For instance, does the US get
only one single gold for the men's basketball team, or do they award one for
each player on the team? I think in the official count it's just one, but I'm
not sure.

Anyway, the IOC's official line is that they don't recognize medal counts for
nations, they just provide data - competition is between individuals, even if
they do represent countries.

While that may seem like a bit of a cop-out, it does make sense. I'm not even
sure you can really compare medal counts between individuals in different
sports, because the number of related events differs in each category.

It's entertaining to think about in a water-cooler sort of way, but otherwise,
you can only get a very rough sense of a country's devotion to sport. Sure, a
medal count close to zero for a large country might indicate this - but even
then, it's not like there's olympic cricket, is there? If there were, and it
was only worth one medal for the entire thing, I think most of India would
happily trade first place in the medal count for one gold in cricket ;)

~~~
krschultz
Correct each team only counts as one medal.

You are right there is no correlation. Being insanely dominant in a sport like
basketball yields two medals (men & womens). Being insanely dominant in
swimming yields medals for men and womens, multiple positions on the podium,
multiple events, etc. No matter how great of a volleyball player you are, you
can only earn one medal. So countries that focus on certain areas
(track/field, swimming, diving, gymnastics) get a lot more than those that
focus on team sports.

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aggieben
I wonder if there's are some correlations to be found that might not jump out
from these numbers, like medals won vs.

# distance from home country to hosting country

# similarity of hosting country's culture to home country

I'd also like to know how many medals were won by NCAA or American
professional league athletes representing other countries (Usain Bolt, for
example).

~~~
Locke
While a lot of athletes from around the world attend college / compete in the
US, Usain Bolt isn't a good example.

I seem to remember one of the commentators saying that a lot of the sprinters
from Jamaica (and the Caribbean in general) are somewhat unique for having
_not_ come to the US.

Usain Bolt's wikipedia page doesn't have him spending any time in the US:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usain_Bolt>

~~~
aggieben
I seem to recall one of the NBC commentators saying that Bolt attended college
in the U.S. and competed in the NCAA. I don't follow track at all, so I had no
internal fact-check for knowing any better. My mistake if I was wrong.

~~~
seano
He turned down the offer of a US scholarship to train in Jamaica.

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zandorg
How about medals per incarcerated convict?

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KevBurnsJr
India not lookin so hot.

