Purely based on medal count, the Netherlands is currently "winning" the Olympics with 17 medals. Russia and The U.S. are tied in second with 16 medals and Canada And Norway tied in 3rd with 14. Yet, do these numbers truly reflect a countries athletic prowess, when considering the difference in resources available to the country? The Atlantic recently posted an article, in which the author takes a different approach to measuring a countries olympic success. The article featured two charts, one which ranked medal performance relative to populations and the other which ranked medal performances relative to GDP.
These charts reveal that the countries that are really winning the Sochi Olympics are Norway, Slovenia, and Latvia. I find this analysis of the Sochi Olympics far more interesting than the standard medal count, because it acknowledges economic subtleties, enabling it to more fairly rank a countries relative Olympic success.
I like to see these smaller European countries statistically beating the U.S. and China.
ReplyDeleteByron Otis- How good it is to acknowledge the advantages large, rich countries have, in even events like the Olympics, and to give smaller countries like Slovenia the respect they deserve for their accomplishments
ReplyDeleteWow those statistics are way more interesting than just the number of medals per country... People should pay more attention to this sort of thing
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