The world looks at Beijing

In August then, the Beijing Olympics dominated the news spectrum. and whilst I have modest interest in a few of the sports on display at such occasion, this wall to wall media coverage goes a bit on my nerves after a while.



Anyway, as a statistically minded person with a warped sense of humour, I can wring some fun even out of the Olympics and the product is the following


25th August, 2008

Beijing Olympics

For a person who is only mildly interested in Olympic sport (hence suffered a fair bit in the last 2 weeks) but quite interested in statistics, the real joy of the Olympics starts a day after the closing ceremony and lasts for a few hours.

I guess we all know, which countries are leading the medal tally and, depending on your way of looking at the statistics, you rank countries either by gold medals achieved or by the total medals collected.

However, since I would always strive towards the fairest view of things, I have calculated a total medal value which gives each gold medal 3 points, each Silver 2 and each Bronze 1 point and thus creates a total medal value. By that value the ladder looks like this

1 China
2 USA
3 Russia
4 United Kingdom
5 Australia
6 Germany
7 France
8 South Korea
9 Italy
10 Japan

However, there are obviously other elements which one could – or dare I say should - take into consideration in the process of arriving at a medal tally. Such as the size of the country. In other words, the question arises, how many square kilometres does it take to achieve one medal value point. And obviously, the fewer the square km required, the higher on the table. On that score the first three places go to

1 Bahrain
2 Singapore
3 Jamaica

The UK still does quite well on place 9 and Germany on place 14, but China falls back to 49th place and the mighty USA to 51st. Sadly, Australia does rank even worse with 63rd place. So let’s forget about that and focus on other aspects!

Well lets see, what other parameters would make PERFECT sense. There is obviously the total population numbers. After all, Olympia's greatest have to come from a sporty population and it is only fair to conclude that the ratio between total medal value and size of the population would be a good indicator of sportive prowess. And you guessed it, that favours Australia

In all fairness (that’s how I am) there are a few countries still doing better on that score than Australia and those are

1 Jamaica
2 Bahamas
3 Iceland

Who would have thought Iceland gets up there? Which sports did they take part in? But amongst the medal kings and queens the ranks look like this

6 Australia
21 United Kingdom
25 South Korea
30 France
35 Germany
37 Russia
39 Ukraine
40 Italy
43 USA
57 Japan
67 China

Well you could say this table above is a table of squandered opportunities, so many people, so little medal value (China, Japan, USA)

It is often said these days, that it takes money to medal. And no doubt, a few National Olympic committees are now going with cap in hand to their Governments and ask for oodles of money in order to be able to improve on their national result in London in 2012 and, by implication, the nation’s pride and joy and, not to forget, prestige of the country in the chorus of the world’s nations.

Well I have bad news for those plucky Olympic chiefs. Based on GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per person per country it ain’t the money

The ranking before the country name shows the place in terms of GDP per person/medal value and the figures in brackets show the ranking in terms of GDP per person

The first three countries based on GDP/medal value ratio are:

1 China (66)
2 Ethiopia (87)
3 Kenya (81)

And a special mention goes to Ethiopia, being the poorest country in terms of GDP per person and making it to place two in the GDP/medal value ratio. And Kenya is not far behind.

Last, but not least one should look also at the overall ‘capacity to pay’ that is the total GDP and its relation to total medal value. After all it’s the country which will earn the glory and the country has to pay! And again, the numbers in brackets ( ) show the placing in terms of GDP of those countries amongst the 87 nations that scored at least one medal and the ranking in front of the country name denotes the place based on ratio between GDP and medal value

On that basis the first three are

1 Mongolia (79)
2 Georgia (72)
3 Jamaica (49)

Three cheers for Mongolia. You can get to the top if you let the statisticians have a go at it. It must have been all those fancy wrestlers or boxers (I don’t know, have not watched any of it)

And finally the relation between total GDP and medal value for our so called medal Kings and Queens, well eat your heart out says Mongolia.

12 Ukraine (48)
25 Russia (19)
39 Australia (15)
41 China (6)
44 South Korea (13)
54 United Kingdom (4)
60 France (5)
64 Italy (9)
68 Germany (3)
77 USA (1)
83 Japan (2)

USA and Japan and Germany, you might be filthy rich but it does not buy you medal value. The 3 countries with the highest GDP – the riches nations – end up on the last three places in the ratio rating out of the ten and in the last quarter of all 87 nations.