A better tally
Update: all the medal tallies, update regularly, here.
| Country | G | S | B | Tot | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 17 | 12 | 11 | 40 |
| 2 | China | 15 | 11 | 10 | 36 |
| 3 | Japan | 12 | 4 | 3 | 19 |
| 4 | Australia | 8 | 5 | 8 | 21 |
| 5 | Russia | 5 | 11 | 12 | 28 |
| 6 | Italy | 5 | 6 | 3 | 14 |
| 7 | France | 5 | 5 | 6 | 16 |
| 8 | Germany | 5 | 5 | 9 | 19 |
| 9 | Ukraine | 5 | 1 | 2 | 8 |
| 10 | South Korea | 4 | 8 | 3 | 15 |
The Olympics being half over now, it seems like a good time to see how the medal tally’s looking. You’ve probably seen the medal tally around the place, and perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s the big, rich countries — the United States, China and Russia — who are leading the charge.
As of this morning, the top countries are as shown in the table at right.
Assuming for a moment that the Olympic medal tally is meant to show the relative sporting success of the competing coutries, it seems to me there’s a few problems with this table.
Of course America is on top. As well as having the world’s biggest chip on their shoulder, they have a huge population and buckets of money. But if an American athlete wins a gold medal, does it really mean more than if, say, a Nauruan won a bronze? Nauru is a country with fewer than 10,000 population, and they’re so broke it’s not funny.
So, with that in mind, let’s fiddle with the numbers a bit.
One of the first things I’m going to do is treat all Olympic medals equally. Gold, Silver, or Bronze, if you win an Olympic medal you’ve got something to be proud of. If a country wins, say, five bronze medals, most people would put them below a country with one gold. But five bronze medals means you’ve produced five top-class performances, so I reckon the reverse makes sense. I’m going to use the total medal count as the basis of the rest of this excursion into statistics.
| Country | G | S | B | Tot | Pop (M) | Medals/M | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Australia | 8 | 5 | 8 | 21 | 19.9 | 1.055 |
| 2 | Slovakia | 2 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 5.4 | 0.922 |
| 3 | Trinidad and Tobago | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1.1 | 0.912 |
| 4 | Netherlands | 2 | 5 | 5 | 12 | 16.3 | 0.735 |
| 5 | Cuba | 0 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 11.3 | 0.619 |
| 6 | Hungary | 2 | 3 | 1 | 6 | 10.0 | 0.598 |
| 7 | Slovenia | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2.0 | 0.497 |
| 8 | Belarus | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 10.3 | 0.485 |
| 9 | Croatia | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4.5 | 0.445 |
| 10 | Georgia | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 4.7 | 0.426 |
Here in Australia, we’re very proud of the fact that, despite our small population, we’re right up there with the big boys. On the main Olympic broadcaster here, they’ve occasionally been running what they call the “real” medal tally — medals won per capita. That table is shown at right.
Well, that’s obviously a bit different, and on behalf of my country I’d like
to mention how thrilled we are to be leading the medal tally. Our sympathies
go out to the United States (in 31st place), China (45th), Japan (29th), and
Russia (25th). One wonders why they even bothered to send a team.
Obviously, a medal tally taking account of population goes some way towards
painting a true picture of performance at the Olympics. After all, countries
with bigger populations are bound to have more natural athletes. That’s just
the law of probability at work.
But population isn’t everything, especially these days when sport is big business.
One of the reasons Australia is doing so well on a per-capita basis is because
of the considerable amounts of public money that go into supporting sport and
developing talent in this country. The same is true in most rich countries.
So let’s take a look of the medal tally by Gross National Product:
| Country | G | S | B | Tot | GNP ($Tn) | Medals/GNP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cuba | 0 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 0.032 | 221.589 |
| 2 | Mongolia | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0.005 | 205.044 |
| 3 | Georgia | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0.012 | 164.204 |
| 4 | North Korea | 0 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 0.023 | 131.291 |
| 5 | Zimbabwe | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 0.024 | 124.844 |
| 6 | Trinidad and Tobago | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0.011 | 94.340 |
| 7 | Belarus | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 0.062 | 80.762 |
| 8 | Azerbaijan | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0.026 | 75.930 |
| 9 | Slovakia | 2 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 0.072 | 69.156 |
| 10 | Bulgaria | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 0.057 | 52.512 |
Yikes! On a medals per GNP basis, the leader board is made up entirely of
countries you probably didn’t even know had won medals. Not a white anglo saxon
amongst them. Australia slips down to 15th place on this table, the US is 43rd,
China 38th, Japan 41st, and Russia 21st.
Finally, let’s combine the two. By multiplying the medals-per-million population
by the medals-per-trillion GNP, we get this table:
| Country | G | S | B | Tot | Medal rate | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cuba | 0 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 137.158 |
| 2 | Trinidad and Tobago | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 86.976 |
| 3 | Mongolia | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 74.534 |
| 4 | Georgia | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 69.978 |
| 5 | Slovakia | 2 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 63.750 |
| 6 | Belarus | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 39.163 |
| 7 | Australia | 8 | 5 | 8 | 21 | 38.858 |
| 8 | Zimbabwe | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 29.556 |
| 9 | Hungary | 2 | 3 | 1 | 6 | 25.632 |
| 10 | Bulgaria | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 20.957 |
21 August 2004
11:40
I’ll kiss you on the cheek of your choosing during my next visit to your fine country if you’ll only agree to do this again once the games are over.
21 August 2004
11:48
I agree, and I choose the left, lower cheek
Actually, I’d go one further, churn out some PHP and make a table that updates automatically, if I could just find an XML feed with the medal counts… anyone?
21 August 2004
13:35
What about the Canadians? Oh wait we are there just to look good in our clothing from ROOTS! Go Canucks GO.
22 August 2004
01:09
Since I know next to nothing about php (and that’s an exageration) I’m not sure if this is at all useful, but I was looking for a link to a story I heard about tv coverage by NBC (I think) in America where, unsatisfied with their low placing on the tally ladder over the first week and a half, decided to alter the way they counted it so that they’d come out on top. It would be laughable if we didn’t know it had been done with complete seriousness.
Anyway, I didn’t find that story, but I did find this:
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/07/27/213752.php
which might be just what you asked for anyway. Btw your site is great, I have become a regular. I especially like the history of bugger…. as yet unfinished … hint hint ;p
23 August 2004
09:15
Mongie, Mongie, Mongie! Oi! Oi! Oi!
23 August 2004
14:12
Following the classical Games tradition, I’d recommend a city medal table rather than a country one. Cities are very much proud of their medal winners. (we just got one for Auckland with Sarah Ulmer in cycling)
27 August 2004
12:19
Have you considered doing a correlation anaylsis between medal ranking and a ranking based on the size of the olympic team for each nation? This might tell if olympic performance is mearly a correlation to the size of the team you send.
2 September 2004
06:34
ummm….sorry to burst your bubble, but per capita doesn’t mean squat when Australia sends 500 athletes, roughly the same number sent by the USA and China!!
The US has approximately 15 times as many people as Australia, but could only send 500+ athletes due to IOC rules. Per capita medal count would only work if the US had been allowed to send 7,631 athletes to your 500! As it is the per capita medal tally is hardly the “real medal count” LOL. Sorry, but in the end, the US and Australia sent the same number of athletes, but the US got over twice as many medals.
8 October 2004
19:18
Hi,
As I have mentioned above, My name is Gilbert J. Benjamin. I am a student of B-Com and am interested in Tally very much. Thats the only thing people ask from an Accountant.
I would like to get some help on Tally. Maybe a guide, or something like that…I can’t do a course upon that because I don’t get time for that.
Hoping for your favourable reply.
Thanking You,
Your’s Faithfully,
Gilbert J. Benjamin.