Comments on: Best sporting nation?

By: Danny Yee

Danny Yee — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 03:17:42 +0000

Well done Australia? For wasting more of our GDP collecting worthless shiny bits of metal than any other OECD country?

By: felix culpa

felix culpa — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:22:03 +0000

Ah, our oldest and dearest friend, at least if we’re statisticians: endless regress. Always another mountain beyond, and were we by some outrageous efflorescence of mountaineering mischance to run out of mountains, there are the infinitely receding reaches of interstellar space to draw us ever further into the unknown but calculable reaches in which to loose the dogs of statistical readjustment.

Onward and upward to the furthest attainable fields of academically slanted entertainment.

Just kidding.
Go Canada!

By: Mikhail

Mikhail — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:31:41 +0000

Shouldn’t this also take into account varying number of games a given country participated in? Obvious examples – US, Russia and China all participated in significantly different number of events, with the US being by far most regular participant. So, we have to adjust for the opportunity to get medals.

By: Gold Rush

Gold Rush — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:06:50 +0000

Interesting. . .also on a similar note the science of sport did an analysis:

http://www.sportsscientists.com/2008/09/olympic-games-medals-analysis.html

Seems that correcting for for population is only fair. USA and China have huge talent pools, and should lead the medal haul hands down becasue of population.

By: felix culpa

felix culpa — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:24:46 +0000

Zamfir, you obviously enjoy Solomonic insight. Applause.

Since the self-identified, no doubt real, Canadians have made no move, I as an ersatz Canadian will leap into the breach: I rejoice to see that Canada outscored the USA by a wide margin, if only one place in the standings.

By: TJB

TJB — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:21:38 +0000

You should use a more relvent measure—-where do the atheletes actually live and train? You will find a huge number come out of USA programs both university and club level. Plus, using GNP is miss leading—-the USA is significantly ahead of every other China=$1,200/person/year v. USA=$42,000/person/year—most of Europe is in the $20K range. Use population and look at were the people actually come from—-big difference…this is only the Olympic sports…there is a universe of professional sports missing too

By: Zamfir

Zamfir — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:57:02 +0000

Nordic, it is my opinion that fun statistics should be treated with the uttermost gravity, to increase their amusement value to the maximum. Of course, the opposite applies to serious stats.

By: Nordic Mousse

Nordic Mousse — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:22:18 +0000

Zamfir:

dividing by population has 2 downsides

At least two, I should think; but I said it was a “fun metric”, so what the heck

On the other hand, there are some clean comparisons you really can make. If you object to Hungary’s magnificent haul, then how about Sweden’s even better result of 593 medals with a smaller population than Hungary’s; or Finland’s 450 with a much smaller population than Sweden’s – both outpoint the major countries by at least 7:1. So does Norway, for that matter, and Switzerland

Fortunately for all of us, Australia doesn’t do winter sport

By: almostinfamous

almostinfamous — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:07:12 +0000

@John #42
true that! if only cricket were in the world cup, we would see most indians actually care about sportspeople. for all the hype, i wouldn’t mind betting that Abhinav Bindra’s name, now in the history books, will stay only there. we still hear stories of past olympic medallists in hockey, etc. are living lives of poverty…

@derrida derider #45:
aussie test dominance seems set to continue for a while longer (remember india still lost that series), though the competition overall in the shorter versions has gotten tougher and more unpredictable.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:36:43 +0000

Genghis’s Dynamic Pursuits?

By: abb1

abb1 — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:27:36 +0000

When you were living on trees the Mongols already knew what GDP is.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:03:32 +0000

The very concept of “GDP” is alien to the Mongols. Notsneaky is being Eurocentric.

By: derrida derider

derrida derider — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:56:59 +0000

Yep, John’s right about cricket – we Aussies are only upset about that because we’ve enjoyed our own short period of dominance and the Indians are going to take it from us by fair means or foul (judging by last summer’s events).

But given our buying of Olympic medals, we’ve no right to complain. A nice cross-country econometric study should be able to get a nice estimate of the marginal cost of a medal.

By: Zamfir

Zamfir — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:14:21 +0000

Nordic Mousse, dividing by population has 2 downsides:

the first is the same as adding the former Soviet Union or the EU together: Large countries are “bandwidth constrained”, not “memory constrained”. They could sent more potential medal candidates per sport, but they are just not allowed by the rules.

The second is selection bias: if you were to look at US states and picked one with loads of medals per inhabitant, it would score much higher than the entire US.

And don’t forget all those medals Hungary won in the Austro-Hungarian empire days :-)

That said, I am all in favour of lists that irritate the USAians, but this year the standard list already has that role…

By: Nordic Mousse

Nordic Mousse — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:52:54 +0000

notsneaky:

Can you post a link to the “raw data” so we can monkey around with it?

Sure. This isn’t the table I referred to, and doesn’t have rankings, but it’s enough to show differences

A fun metric is to show the number of medals per million of population – for example: look at Hungary’s 10 million population and 464 medals and compare it with the USA’s 300 million population but “only” 2514 medals

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-time_Olympic_Games_medal_count