I love the Olympics. I enjoy watching the competition, and occasionally I enjoy the behind the scenes, human interest story. But one thing that I struggle with is: Who is winning? Depending win where you look you can see who has the most medals, who has the most gold medals, etc. So I am going to throw my scoring into the mix. Yes, it is probably as convoluted as the scoring in figure skating. (what is the difference between at toe loop and a lutz anyway?) So here’s my scoring:
- Every Gold is worth 3 points
- Every Silver is worth 2 points
- Every Bronze is worth 1 point
Yep, more points for the winners. But this is where my scoring becomes interesting. I divide the number of points by the number of athletes. I found the number of athletes from http://www.vancouver2010.com/. What I find cool about this is that figures out which country sent the best athletes. That’s my idea of who wins. Since this my blog I get to make my own rules. So without further ado, here’s the current top 10: Final Standings Updated 2/28/10 2:55 pm EST
| Place |
Country |
Athletes |
Gold |
Silver |
Bronze |
Points |
Points per Athlete |
| 1 |
Republic of Korea |
46 | 6 | 6 | 2 | 32 | .696 |
| 2 |
Netherlands |
34 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 17 | .500 |
| 3 |
Norway |
99 | 9 | 8 | 6 | 49 | .459 |
|
4 |
Germany |
153 | 10 | 13 | 7 | 63 | .412 |
| 5 |
Austria |
81 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 30 | .370 |
| 6 |
United States of America |
215 | 9 | 15 | 13 | 70 | .326 |
| 7 |
Canada |
205 | 14 | 7 | 5 | 61 | .298 |
| 8 |
Croatia |
18 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 5 | .278 |
| 9 |
People’s Republic of China |
90 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 23 | .256 |
|
10 |
Poland |
50 |
1 |
3 |
2 |
11 |
.220 |
Tags: Useless Information
Very cool system. I can’t wait to see how your scores pan out over the next two weeks.
how about tracking the distinct number of athletes that win medals? if one country sends ten athletes, but one athlete wins two golds and two silvers, then their score (by your scale) would be a 1.0, which is quite skewed.
it would be better to only count that athlete once, not sure which medal you would want to count (gold or silver), but i would just treat them equally. at this level the difference between 1st and 3rd is quite minimal.
That is a very astute observation, but if one athlete were able to win 2 golds and 2 silvers it would give the country a huge boost and obviously that country produced the best athlete (in his/her discipline) which is what I am looking for. After all the song they play is the national anthem not the athlete’s favorite song. Yes this formula does give a huge advantage to the smaller countries, but I have never been a big fan of whoever has the most money wins at a sporting event. (This is one reason I don’t follow professional baseball.) But I am noticing that even at my scale, the countries with the larger contingent are bubbling to the top. I’m actually hoping a country with one participant wins gold and gets a 3.0 and is almost unbeatable. Since almost 1/4 of the entered countries fall in that category that may be possible. So points per athlete is the basis for this Olympics. Also tracking 2,655 athletes would take more time that I have available at this point in my life.