5 ms·

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 i

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.
- lern_too_spel 5y ago
  Again, silver and bronze are consolation prizes, so extrapolating even further from there is a fool's errand. Some sports (including most of the team sports) don't even allow countries to field multiple entries, with the strong implication that those other places don't matter. Tournament-based sports at the Olympics don't even bother to define a ranking after fourth, and many sporting events outside the Olympics don't even bother determining ranking after second and only go as far as second because it's needed to determine who is first.
  - jszymborski 5y ago
    To quote the Big L, "that's just, like, your opinion man". I, for one, think we do an incredible disservice to the athletes that perform to not acknowledge other places. When an athlete manages to beat an Olympic or World record and comes in second by a hair, I think its pretty silly to state "other places don't matter". First place is better than second is better than 8th is better than 11th. If these places didn't matter, why would we bother keeping record of standings? I just don't get the "Gold or last" mentality.
    - lern_too_spel 5y ago
      Because that way of thinking encourages sending hundreds, thousands, or millions of competitors and because (as shown by sports that don't allow one country to win multiple medals) the organizers of the sports don't think those other places matter either. We don't try to determine the world rankings of people who failed to qualify for the Olympics, nor should we try to determine the rankings of teams that fail to qualify from group play into elimination rounds of the Olympics, nor should we try to rank teams that are eliminated from elimination rounds that haven't played each other. They're top athletes, but the point of each Olympic sport is to determine the best. Any additional ranking computed beyond that is purely arbitrary.
  - getlawgdon 5y ago
    If you think a silver at the olys is a "consolation prize" then you have never spent a moment in any type of real athletic competition, let alone been among the best of the best on the planet.
axiosgunnar 5y ago
It might have been arbitrary many decades ago to decide the cut-off to be at 3, but the athletes have been since optimizing for those arbitrary rules, i.e. getting somewhere above that cut-off. Instead of maximizing for first place, which requires a different strategy, i.e going „all in“.

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.

lern_too_spel 5y ago
Again, silver and bronze are consolation prizes, so extrapolating even further from there is a fool's errand. Some sports (including most of the team sports) don't even allow countries to field multiple entries, with the strong implication that those other places don't matter. Tournament-based sports at the Olympics don't even bother to define a ranking after fourth, and many sporting events outside the Olympics don't even bother determining ranking after second and only go as far as second because it's needed to determine who is first.
- jszymborski 5y ago
  To quote the Big L, "that's just, like, your opinion man". I, for one, think we do an incredible disservice to the athletes that perform to not acknowledge other places. When an athlete manages to beat an Olympic or World record and comes in second by a hair, I think its pretty silly to state "other places don't matter". First place is better than second is better than 8th is better than 11th. If these places didn't matter, why would we bother keeping record of standings? I just don't get the "Gold or last" mentality.
  - lern_too_spel 5y ago
    Because that way of thinking encourages sending hundreds, thousands, or millions of competitors and because (as shown by sports that don't allow one country to win multiple medals) the organizers of the sports don't think those other places matter either. We don't try to determine the world rankings of people who failed to qualify for the Olympics, nor should we try to determine the rankings of teams that fail to qualify from group play into elimination rounds of the Olympics, nor should we try to rank teams that are eliminated from elimination rounds that haven't played each other. They're top athletes, but the point of each Olympic sport is to determine the best. Any additional ranking computed beyond that is purely arbitrary.
- getlawgdon 5y ago
  If you think a silver at the olys is a "consolation prize" then you have never spent a moment in any type of real athletic competition, let alone been among the best of the best on the planet.

axiosgunnar 5y ago

It might have been arbitrary many decades ago to decide the cut-off to be at 3, but the athletes have been since optimizing for those arbitrary rules, i.e. getting somewhere above that cut-off. Instead of maximizing for first place, which requires a different strategy, i.e going „all in“.