Alternate Olympic Medals Tables

[Fidcal]

I found the medals tables very interesting at http://www.billmitch...tally_2012.html

 

But my feeling was it didn't properly combine the advantages of wealth and population so I devised a new method. I tried to email the author. His address is given on the page as Bill.Mitchell AT newcastle.edu.au (change AT to @ and eliminate the spaces) but my email program gives this error...

 

Error - sent data: "RCPT TO:<[address deleted by me]>"

Receive error: "550-(PC2-Vista) [80.189.131.180]:50313 is currently not permitted to relay 550 through this server."

 

I wondered if it's the full stop in his name which I've never seen in an email address before.

 

For interest, here is my planned email. I'd really like to send it....

 

 

Hi, thanks for your alternate Olympic medal tables which are fascinating. However, although your GDP per person table evaluates $ resources per person, it does not imo fully combine the advantages of wealth and of finding more medal-winners in a larger population.

 

My math is not very good so maybe I've got this completely wrong but I think there should be a table that takes weighted medals (times a thousand to get whole numbers) THEN divides by GDP and THEN divides by population.

 

Here is my quick estimate of a few significant countries using this method (medals at 6 Aug.) You can see that Australia with a relatively small population does far better whereas China fares far worse. This makes sense to me because China has the advantage of both a huge wealth AND a huge population. The likelihood of finding medal-winners in that huge pool is much greater.

 

__________$GDP ___ POP ___WM*1000 __RESULT

 

JAMAICA__ 25 ______ 2.7_____ 2.99 ___ 44296.29

N.KOREA__ 40 _____ 24.5 _____ 4.3 ____ 4387.75

AUSTRALIA 914 ____ 22.6 _____ 11.3 ____ 547.04

UK_______ 2261 ____ 62.6 ____ 26.7 ____ 188.64

USA_____ 15094 ___ 311.6 ____ 43.18 _____ 9.18

CHINA___ 11300 ___ 1344.1 ___ 46.00 _____ 3.27

 

 

Again, if one imagines a state on Mars with double the population of China but the same wealth then it would have half the GDP person so would fare even better on your table than China - yet have the advantage of a larger pool from which to fish for athletes.

 

Another example: here in the UK we have more than double the wealth of Australia AND triple the population - yet we don't have six times the medals; clearly Australia should be above the UK in the table. Imagine six Australias sharing their medals totals!

 

I'd be interested to hear your views on this approach.

 

[stumpy]

the 550 error is cause by his email server not recognising your email as being legal, and has therefore decided its spam and blocked it

[Bikerdude]

Hmm interesting, but nice to see the UK up there with the China/USA in the most amount of medals - not that I have any intrest in the Olympics per se.