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> Once again, the table flows naturally from left to right. The most critical column is leftmost(number of gold medals). Hm, I don't think so. The most critica

by cco 5y ago

> Once again, the table flows naturally from left to right. The most critical column is leftmost(number of gold medals). Hm, I don't think so. The most critical bit of information is the country, the Olympics are a contest of countries. To wit, I'm sure many publications will order the table so that it best pleases their audience, i.e. places their country the highest. When I, and I would bet most, people are looking at these lists they're looking for the top three countries, or their own, the exact reason for each country's place is far less material than the ranking system that the table maker chose.

djrobstep 5y ago
I've no doubt many people look at a medal table, look for their own country's name, confirm it is near the top, and close the tab without examining it further. But I'm not sure that is the use case we should be optimizing for!
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  To be fair, the Olympics’ explicit primary goal is for “country pride” to have a scene. Removing that part, none of it makes much sense (if you only care about individual athletes or disciplines, you’ll be fine with annual world events)
KingOfCoders 5y ago
List from the top divided by number of residents: Looks like New Zealand is on top, then Australia, Netherlands and Great Britain (there might be stronger countries down the list, I just calculated the first scores). China is last, the US second to last and then Germany. United States 0.508836076 People's Republic of China 0.117310443 Russian Olympic Committee 0.754847645 Great Britain 1.48721921 Japan 0.752177356 Australia 2.996845426 Germany 0.734939759 Italy 0.928689884 France 0.745600954 Netherlands 2.604166667 New Zealand 7.551020408 I wonder what it says about countries/societies sport system that are near to each other, like France, Germany, Japan and Russia at 0.75
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  > Russia at 0.75 Where do you see Russia on that list? Do you think state-sponsored doping should be ignored since sanctioning it is a mild inconvenience for you?

by cco 5y ago

djrobstep 5y ago

I've no doubt many people look at a medal table, look for their own country's name, confirm it is near the top, and close the tab without examining it further. But I'm not sure that is the use case we should be optimizing for!

makeitdouble 5y ago
To be fair, the Olympics’ explicit primary goal is for “country pride” to have a scene. Removing that part, none of it makes much sense (if you only care about individual athletes or disciplines, you’ll be fine with annual world events)

KingOfCoders 5y ago

List from the top divided by number of residents: Looks like New Zealand is on top, then Australia, Netherlands and Great Britain (there might be stronger countries down the list, I just calculated the first scores). China is last, the US second to last and then Germany. United States 0.508836076 People's Republic of China 0.117310443 Russian Olympic Committee 0.754847645 Great Britain 1.48721921 Japan 0.752177356 Australia 2.996845426 Germany 0.734939759 Italy 0.928689884 France 0.745600954 Netherlands 2.604166667 New Zealand 7.551020408 I wonder what it says about countries/societies sport system that are near to each other, like France, Germany, Japan and Russia at 0.75

axiosgunnar 5y ago
> Russia at 0.75 Where do you see Russia on that list? Do you think state-sponsored doping should be ignored since sanctioning it is a mild inconvenience for you?