Let's start by taking a look at the final medal count for the 2012 Olympics in London.
So at first glance, it looks like the United States clearly had the most successful Olympic games since they won the most medals, with far more medals than China and Russia. However, as former college football coach and TV football commentator Lee Corso would say:
Let us start by taking a look at how many athletes participated in the Olympics by country.
Now we start seeing a story develop. While the USA won the most medals (104) in the Olympics, 16 more medals than China and 22 more than Russia, the USA had 155 more athletes than China competing in the Olympics. So we we do some simple number crunching on the proportion of medal winning athletes each country had in London, we literally get a different picture.
So did the USA clearly win the 2012 Olympics? Well, as an economist and data analyst I would say, it depends. The USA had the most successful Olympiad in the absolute number of medals won. However, in regards to relative success based on the number of athletes competing, China had the most successful Olympiad. Welcome to the world of analytics.
As a final note, I received this picture regarding future Olympic games.
You can only guess what my reaction was to this thought.
Clearly, China is run by incompetent buffoons and either could not afford to send more athletes or weren't good enough to compete. No analytic can save them from ignominious defeat. USA = #1.
ReplyDeleteEric, your analysis doesn't take into account the fact that there are objective and subjective sports at the Olympics. Objective sports are those where time, for example, determines the winner. Subjective sports are those where a number of judges award points arbitrarily according to their taste and liking, like gymnastics, diving, etc. Who is to decide that Athlete A is better than Athlete B by 0.01 point? China is the winner on subjective sports, but take those out and USA is again Number One.
ReplyDeleteThe better metric is the amount of medals by population total. In that metric, China fails miserably, while the U.S. fares reasonably well, though nowhere near as well as Hungary. However, as somebody who viewed the games in question, my nonbiased opinion is that the U.S. thrashed China and the other totalitarian nations soundly, and clearly established itself as the best sporting nation on earth. In the official jmag standings, therefore, the U.S. is first, and I'm afraid China beat out only North Korea and Cuba.
ReplyDeleteHow did China do in basketball? I thought so.
ReplyDelete