Reply #20: Agreed, raw Olympic medal counts are meaningless (a little stats now)

[daleo]

If you take the first 25 medal winning counties (who won 78% of the medals), and sort them in the different ways, here are a few key results:

First in total medals, U.S. (Australia is fourth, Canada 18th))
First in gold medals, U.S. (Australia is fourth, Canada 21st)
First in medals, adjusted for population, Australia (U.S. is 19th, Canada 18th).
First in gold medals, adjusted for population, Norway (Australia is second, U.S. is 17th, Canada is 19th.

It took about 2.7 million Americans to win a medal, but only about 386,000 Australians.
It took about 7.8 million Americans to win a medal, but only about 900,000 Norwegians, and about 1.1 million Australians.


Canada comes in just ahead of the U.S. in the population per medal, needing about 2.6 million Canadians per medal. Our press has been going through copious hand-wringing at our poor showing, and comparing ourselves unfavorably with the U.S., with the usual comments about good old American capitalist spirit versus the Canadian unwillingness to achieve excellence. Yet, this simple statistical correction shows how idiotic these conjectures are.

Not to take anything from the Australians, who do an amazing job. It must be all those Labour governments that they have elected. Nor to take anything away from the U.S. - 19th isn't bad when you consider how many countries there are in the world.

These numbers might change a bit depending on population source, and whether all the medals were in on my medal count source, but the essential finding will be about the same.

I suspect if China does very well at the next Olympics, the U.S. and other western media will quickly pick up on the population per medal concept, especially if China overtakes the U.S. in the overall medal count. This is a distinct possibility in Beijing.