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Show HN: Olympics Ranking Adjusted by Population (Evening Project)
- andrewfelix 14y agoWould be interesting to see it adjusted for GDP and/or sport budgets per capita. In Australia we invest a lot of money in our sporting programs relative to our population size.
- pykello 14y agoThanks for the idea, here it is: http://moshayedi.net/london2012/ranking-gdp.html http://moshayedi.net/london2012/ranking-gdp.html
- jeza 14y agoIt seems we've spent just as much on preparing our athletes for London 2012[1] as the Phoenix mission to Mars [2]. So when are we launching a space probe into space? :-) [1] $380 million - http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/No_surprises_for_sport_in_2012/2013_Australian_federal_budget http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/No_surprises_for_sport_in_2012/2... [2] $386 million - http://www.aerospaceguide.net/mars/phoenixlander.html http://www.aerospaceguide.net/mars/phoenixlander.html
- bjnortier_hn 14y agoThe Guardian has that as well http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/datablog/interactive/2012/aug/07/olympics-2012-alternative-medal-table-visualised http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/datablog/interactive/2012/au...
- dym 14y agoHere's a site with more information and better presentation: http://www.medalspercapita.com/ http://www.medalspercapita.com/
- whalerid3r 14y agoThe Telegraph page that this is pulling data from is itself out of date by a couple of days. The official website might be a better source: http://www.london2012.com/medals/medal-count/ http://www.london2012.com/medals/medal-count/
- pykello 14y agoI tried using that page, but they were resisting about automated bots by giving "Forbidden Request" reponses. I'll try to find a better source though.
- theallan 14y agohttp://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/2012/medals/countries http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/2012/medals/countries
- subsystem 14y agoScraping 101: Set you user-agent to mimic a browser, for example: curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/14.0.835.186 Safari/535.1" http://www.london2012.com/medals/medal-count/ http://www.london2012.com/medals/medal-count/
- pavs 14y agoFor me India is the biggest disappointment of them all. They promoted the hell out of Indian athletes in Olympics before the games. They also consider China to be their biggest competition in every level (economy/military/living standard). Whenever I try to get in to discussion with my Indian friends in the most respectful manner and try to tell them China is several orders of magnitude ahead of India in most things; I get ridiculed or brushed aside. I have found that there are two things you can never reason with, religion and nationalism.
- shrikant 14y agoA different take on this [1]: > The human and financial costs of that, I believe, are something we as a nation can ill-afford. [1] http://greatbong.net/2012/08/07/some-thoughts-on-the-olympics/ http://greatbong.net/2012/08/07/some-thoughts-on-the-olympic...
- JDShu 14y agoWhile I do have problems with the simplistic portrayal of China in this article, I agree strongly with the first section: The nationalism that the Olympics typically brings out in people, is disgusting. It's an event that is supposed to bring the people of our world together, but it just seems to make us more hostile instead.
- PakG1 14y agoDon't put the blanket statement out there. In the case of China, they can be very nationalistic, but you only need to look on their weibo network to see how dissatisfied they are with the state of affairs inside China, whether on infrastructure safety, government corruption, wealth disparity, etc. edit: I mean to say here that nationalism does not necessitate blindness or irrationality. That being said, India is taking some especially big kicks to the groin right now. What with the starving people due to inability to distribute an abundance of food, the massive power outages that have gained global attention, and disappointing economic performance compared to the other BRIC countries, maybe your Indian friends are more defensive right now precisely because they're hurting so much?
- ww520 14y agoWhy not adjusted the ranking by GDP? Sport investment has more to do with money than population.
- mibbitier 14y agoanyway you look at it, GB is doing fantastically well :)
- gnufied 14y agoIn India - it is just not possible to make a living out of athletics. It is largely true and partly just a perception problem. The only sport where you can make a comfortable living is basically Cricket and thats about it. I know few of my friends who were state/national level table tennis and Badminton players but decided to let that thing go and opted for engineering degree because of pressure from parents etc. Heck, I along with my friend are running a startup and one of the things my friend's dad asked is - "who will marry their daughter to you?". And this was for a brilliant embedded programmer who quit his regular to do this thing. I can't imagine hardship (and hilarity) involved in finding prospective bride/groom for someone who "runs" for living. This thing is a no go clearly in Indian society.
- eoin_murphy 14y agoIt seems to me as an outsider as well that any kind of physical activity is generally looked down. Not absolutely but more in a 'if you don't have to, why would you' way. Plus, it's so hot most of the time that any serious aerobic activity is difficult to maintain.
- anu_gupta 14y agoJamaica is also quite hot. Their athletes don't seem to mind so much.
- gnufied 14y agoIt is not about climate or heat. More : http://blogs.wsj.com/india-chief-mentor/2010/02/16/indian-entrepreneurs-need-a-hug-google%E2%80%99s-gandhi/ http://blogs.wsj.com/india-chief-mentor/2010/02/16/indian-en... I believe deep down Indians being bad in athletics is similar to being a entrepreneur is hard in India. The reason is - individual freedom or individual decision making has never been our strong point. So, the one who walks off the beaten path is always unfairly judged by the society. Sure, those who succeed on this path are worshipped like gods here, but when you are starting small, you are up against huge odds. And it starts from your family. It is hard work.
- aerique 14y agoNitpick: the official name for "Holland" is (The) Netherlands. Holland actually denotes only a part of the country and a lot of dutchmen do not take kindly to being called a "Hollander". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland
- Kartificial 14y agoI really do not care when people call it Holland instead of The Netherlands. Enough Dutch people often refer to it as Holland.
- Someone 14y agoNitpick++: the Netherlands is/are not taking part in the olympics; the kingdom of the Netherlands is (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_the_Netherlands http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_the_Netherlands) Also: even London2012.com calls the home nation Great Britain, not the United Kingdom.
- eru 14y agoIf you are nitpicking about the names of states, you'd probably also have to call Germany the Federal Republic of Germany. And lots of other countries have more formal names, too.
- Someone 14y agoFirstly, it wasn't clear, but I intended to nitpick the nitpicker. Secondly, there is a difference. Nowadays, there is only one Germany, so there is no need for clarification. However, people would be offended if someone called it Bayern or Saxony. It surprises me that the team is called GB, given the well-known and IMO better alternative "UK". Also, the announcers at the Olympics say "the kingdom of the Netherlands". I do not think they do that for e.g. Belgium.
- earnubs 14y agoThe Guardian have one of these too, with a link to download the data: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/datablog/interactive/2012/aug/07/olympics-2012-alternative-medal-table-visualised http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/datablog/interactive/2012/au...
- earnubs 14y agoThe NYTimes have something similar too: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/07/sports/olympics/the-best-and-worst-countries-in-the-medal-count.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/07/sports/olympic...
- monkeypizza 14y agoHow about a weighing based on how many people play that sport (weekly, say)? And if one sport has many types of race, just divide up the new medal weight by how many events there are. So if 50 million people play basketball per week and 1 million people swim, and if there is 1 basketball medal and 10 swimming medals, then a basketball medal would be valued at 50*10 of a swimming medal. This way, new events & sports could be added easily, without changing things much. This would also reduce the bickering that happens whenever someone proposes adding or removing an event.
- eru 14y agoBut then you have bickering over what you classify together as types. E.g. does diving belong to swimming? Hurdling together with marathons?
- chj 14y agoHow about this: China only sent 621 athletes out of 1.3 billion people, and Brit has 1361 with a population of merely 62 million.
- bruceboughton 14y ago1361? Team GB is about 541 strong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain_at_the_2012_Summer_Olympics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain_at_the_2012_Summe...
- Someone 14y agoI guess the difference is the inclusion of the non-competing members of the team. http://totallympics.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=2312 http://totallympics.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=231... claims 542 for GB, and 386 for China. GB has a larger team because it a) made an enormous extra effort and b) automatically qualifies for every sport it enters. Sports such as waterpolo, volleyball, football, and hockey typically admit only the world's top 12 or so of countries. GB probably has an entry in all of them. Being team sports, that adds up. The interesting thing to see for GB is how far they will fall back in ten years time. They were abysmal in 1996 (one gold), but grew since.
- nl 14y agoBased on the Australian experience Great Britain will start dropping back in 12 years time (assuming funding for elite sports falls off somewhat like it has in Australia). You'll get plenty of silver though...
- vacri 14y agoIt's also considerably cheaper to field a larger team as the host nation. Or at least, there's so much money being splashed around that the budget for the actual team is peanuts.
- badragon 14y agochina sent 380. GB is the host country. It gets automatic entries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Summer_Olympics#Sorted_by_number_of_athletes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Summer_Olympics#Sorted_by_...
- nodata 14y agoAlready done here: http://www.medalspercapita.com/#weighted-per-capita:2012 http://www.medalspercapita.com/#weighted-per-capita:2012 and has more options too: * per GDP * per year (Beijing, etc.) * per total medals * per GOLD medal * per weighted medal (4=gold, 2=silver, 1=bronze)
- badragon 14y agoHow about adjusting by the number of Olympians per country?
- eru 14y agoThere's an upper limit, and the bigger countries send all they can. (Unless with Olympian you mean something other than number of entrants?)
- __alexs 14y agoNeeds error bars.
- nikcub 14y agoYou should have google'd it, this link has been spreading on Twitter and the UK websites like mad: http://www.medalspercapita.com/ http://www.medalspercapita.com/ it has also spread in Australia because, well, check the results and you will see why.
- nopinsight 14y agoThis is not an entirely fair comparison. Each nation has a quota of the number of athletes for each sport it can send to the Olympics. For example, in swimming, only two participants per nation are allowed. Some of the swimmers who got the 3rd place in US National Trials could even win bronze, but they cannot participate. More often the case, there is only one national team allowed for a relay or team event. So even if China has 300 times the population of New Zealand, it can send the same number of teams and is limited to a maximum of one medal per event. The methodology is biased against larger nations with a good pool of athletes.
- JackWebbHeller 14y ago> For example, in swimming, only two participants per nation are allowed. Really? http://www.usaswimming.org/ViewNewsArticle.aspx?TabId=0&itemid=4537&mid=8712 http://www.usaswimming.org/ViewNewsArticle.aspx?TabId=0&...
- nopinsight 14y agoI meant two participants per nation per event. It should be clear from context.
- nl 14y agoYes, really. I'm from Australia, and we have the same issue. The Jamacians have a similar issue in the sprints (I think you can enter 3 per event there). I'm not sure what you think that shows - perhaps you are missing that there are many different swimming events?
- alastair 14y agoCorrect - remember relay teams are allowed 5 members.
- copithod 14y agoOlympic sailing also only allows each nation to qualify one crew for each type of boat used. The newly crowned Olympic Champion in the Finn class, Ben Ainslie, had a poor regatta at the 2011 Finn World Championships. However, his fellow countrymen still took first and third place overall.
- TimPC 14y agoIsn't the general consensus relevant predictor/measure the ability to fund full-time athletes? A much more interesting (and perhaps fairer) list of adjusted medal total would adjust for an economic measure (likely GNP or GDP).
- zerostar07 14y agoI would also like to see the ranking "By national pride sentiments" , as i'm pretty sure olympics performance is just a meaningless show.
- daveungerer 14y agoPretty cool. One thing is that it's hard to anchor the figures to actual medal counts. I think normalising the data would be awesome. The normalisation should be such that sum(actual medals won) = sum(adjusted medals won).
- marknutter 14y agoOne thing I never see considered in these types of rankings is the fact that in America, all the best athletes are tied up playing one of the four professional sports that make athletes a lot more money than the olympics ever will. For instance, Robert Griffen III, the new stud QB for the Redskins, was a world class hurdler in addition to being an all-star football player. Imagine how dominant the US would be in the Olympics if all its most athletically gifted professional athletes focused on an olympic event rather than their respective sports.
- Of_Prometheus 14y agoI have a very hard time believing that many football players (not least one as unproven as Griffin III) would be able to compete at an Olympic level. Because if one were to follow your argument, we would have to include all the soccer players who, themselves, could have become runners, etc., or otherwise devote more time to the Olympics than their clubs. The pool would necessarily deepen.
- vorg 14y agoThe present ranking for golds is... continental Europe 71 native English speakers 66 East Asia 56 Islamic nations 11 central & south America 10 Sub-Sahara 6
- mlader 14y agoI'd be interested in seeing a time series representation of this data, similar to http://www.gapminder.org http://www.gapminder.org
- loceng 14y agoAdjusting by amount of money spent would be neat too.
- drucken 14y agoNeeds to be at least (reverse) adjusted by number of athletes per country (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Summer_Olympics#Sorted_by_number_of_athletes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Summer_Olympics#Sorted_by_...). This would reduce anomalies like Great Britain submitting approx. same number of atheletes as US, yet being less than a 6th in population size. I doubt there is a way to adjust for submissions per sport and not sure it would be wise anyway since specialism can be viewed as a fair competitive advantage even if it suits the industralized or countries with older Olympic history more.