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I choose the chaotic option of sorting by the score: 3 * gold + 2 * silver + bronze Sorting by gold feels as incorrect to me as sorting by total medals. Sur

I choose the chaotic option of sorting by the score: 3 * gold + 2 * silver + bronze Sorting by gold feels as incorrect to me as sorting by total medals. Sure, a bronze isn't as good as a gold, but sorting by gold is silver/bronze erasure.

mcphage 5y ago
What are the results if you do that?
- mrgordon 5y ago
  Surely the US pulls ahead as currently they have a large lead in total medals and are not too far behind in gold
- jszymborski 5y ago
  I'll post a spreadsheet in a moment, but here's the top 5: - USA: 167 - CHN: 164 - ROC: 109 - GBR: 96 - JPN: 95 Which I think makes the ranking the same as total medals for the top 5. EDIT: Spreadsheet is here https://cryptpad.fr/sheet/#/2/sheet/view/yFp7KdPHA2hC1cBOL0AKAq-9W+jno5+ttkhswrt4qV4/ https://cryptpad.fr/sheet/#/2/sheet/view/yFp7KdPHA2hC1cBOL0A...
  - mrgordon 5y ago
    FYI you’re pulling out of date data it looks like https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/tokyo-2020-summer-olympics-medal-count/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/tokyo-2020-summer-olympic... The US got a lot of recent medals which increases the lead
nayaketo 5y ago
It should be ranked by per capita population. Tiny countries (like Japan or UK) winning more than half gold of US is way more impressive to me.
- jszymborski 5y ago
  Interesting! Perhaps we can do something like: 3 * gold + 2 * silver + bronze + β1 / population + β2 / GDP where β1 and β2 are some coefficients. How do we choose these coefficients? Maybe try to run a simple regression to see how historically predictive pop and GDP are of a nations score w/o the GDP and pop terms.
- KingOfCoders 5y ago
  See my other comment of 'total medals/number of residents', Japan is in the middle (same level as Germany, France and Russia), New Zealand is at the top, then Australia, the Netherlands and GB (probably some others, I only calculated the number for the top of the rankings).
Hammershaft 5y ago
I thought the same, from the scores in the article, China and the States are very close.
LeoPanthera 5y ago
I prefer a binary increment: 4*gold + 2*silver + bronze
lern_too_spel 5y ago
Gold is the only one that matters. Including two more consolation places is completely arbitrary. (Why not have one and stop at silver? Why not have three and include copper after bronze?) It just benefits countries that can field larger teams. Number of second place finishes should only be used as a tie-breaker. That is actually what pretty much every medals table, including the official table on olympics.com, already does (except in the USA because it's important to say we're number one, even if it's number one in third place finishes).
- Hayarotle 5y ago
  If one country managed to win all the silver medals, while each of the other countries managed to get one gold medal each, which country got the best results at the Olympics? There isn't one perfect scoring system in this case, but disregarding everything but gold would completely ignore the value of second place, which is still a win over all other competitors but the first place
  - lern_too_spel 5y ago
    The silver medal is a consolation prize. The other countries would tie for first in the number of first place finishes, which is all that matters. Again, this is what most medals tables already do.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    5 points gold 3 points silver 1 point bronze Those were the calculations for video games winter games/summer games in the 1980. Why not use that?
- jszymborski 5y ago
  I think you stumbled on a great idea! Ranking each country by the sum of the normalised reciprocal of their placements in events. I think that would be pretty cool. Ranking by gold or ranking by total medals in my mind remain terrible ways to rank.
  - 5y ago
hknapp 5y ago
How about basing it on the cost of the medal itself? ( ; gold - $815 silver - $445 bronze - $5 https://en.as.com/en/2021/07/23/olympic_games/1627028063_790955.html https://en.as.com/en/2021/07/23/olympic_games/1627028063_790...

mcphage 5y ago

What are the results if you do that?

mrgordon 5y ago
Surely the US pulls ahead as currently they have a large lead in total medals and are not too far behind in gold
jszymborski 5y ago
I'll post a spreadsheet in a moment, but here's the top 5: - USA: 167 - CHN: 164 - ROC: 109 - GBR: 96 - JPN: 95 Which I think makes the ranking the same as total medals for the top 5. EDIT: Spreadsheet is here https://cryptpad.fr/sheet/#/2/sheet/view/yFp7KdPHA2hC1cBOL0AKAq-9W+jno5+ttkhswrt4qV4/ https://cryptpad.fr/sheet/#/2/sheet/view/yFp7KdPHA2hC1cBOL0A...
- mrgordon 5y ago
  FYI you’re pulling out of date data it looks like https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/tokyo-2020-summer-olympics-medal-count/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/tokyo-2020-summer-olympic... The US got a lot of recent medals which increases the lead

nayaketo 5y ago

It should be ranked by per capita population. Tiny countries (like Japan or UK) winning more than half gold of US is way more impressive to me.

jszymborski 5y ago
Interesting! Perhaps we can do something like: 3 * gold + 2 * silver + bronze + β1 / population + β2 / GDP where β1 and β2 are some coefficients. How do we choose these coefficients? Maybe try to run a simple regression to see how historically predictive pop and GDP are of a nations score w/o the GDP and pop terms.
KingOfCoders 5y ago
See my other comment of 'total medals/number of residents', Japan is in the middle (same level as Germany, France and Russia), New Zealand is at the top, then Australia, the Netherlands and GB (probably some others, I only calculated the number for the top of the rankings).

Hammershaft 5y ago

I thought the same, from the scores in the article, China and the States are very close.

LeoPanthera 5y ago

I prefer a binary increment: 4*gold + 2*silver + bronze

lern_too_spel 5y ago

Gold is the only one that matters. Including two more consolation places is completely arbitrary. (Why not have one and stop at silver? Why not have three and include copper after bronze?) It just benefits countries that can field larger teams. Number of second place finishes should only be used as a tie-breaker. That is actually what pretty much every medals table, including the official table on olympics.com, already does (except in the USA because it's important to say we're number one, even if it's number one in third place finishes).

Hayarotle 5y ago
If one country managed to win all the silver medals, while each of the other countries managed to get one gold medal each, which country got the best results at the Olympics? There isn't one perfect scoring system in this case, but disregarding everything but gold would completely ignore the value of second place, which is still a win over all other competitors but the first place
- lern_too_spel 5y ago
  The silver medal is a consolation prize. The other countries would tie for first in the number of first place finishes, which is all that matters. Again, this is what most medals tables already do.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  5 points gold 3 points silver 1 point bronze Those were the calculations for video games winter games/summer games in the 1980. Why not use that?
jszymborski 5y ago
I think you stumbled on a great idea! Ranking each country by the sum of the normalised reciprocal of their placements in events. I think that would be pretty cool. Ranking by gold or ranking by total medals in my mind remain terrible ways to rank.
- 5y ago

hknapp 5y ago

How about basing it on the cost of the medal itself? ( ; gold - $815 silver - $445 bronze - $5 https://en.as.com/en/2021/07/23/olympic_games/1627028063_790955.html https://en.as.com/en/2021/07/23/olympic_games/1627028063_790...