Java Rants - Latest Comments in 2008 Olympic Medal Counts by Population

Re: 2008 Olympic Medal Counts by Population

francisdisqus — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 01:49:26 -0000

I can't find my country:-/ I'll try powerset.

Re: 2008 Olympic Medal Counts by Population

miles libbey — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 21:37:28 -0000

Next time, just ask someone in the sports team -- we had to go collect that data as well to produce pages like http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/aus.

Re: 2008 Olympic Medal Counts by Population

Breastpumps — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 02:55:11 -0000

Just tried Powerset it's truly better than Google or yahoo in terms of providing the proper information! Now I got the idea how you managed to made this post look so simple and awesome! thanks for the heads up about Powerset, I never knew of it's existence.

Re: 2008 Olympic Medal Counts by Population

Sean Carmody — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:55:38 -0000

@Gaurav Why? Because it's fun!

Re: 2008 Olympic Medal Counts by Population

Sean Carmody — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:54:52 -0000

@sam: The more the merrier, I say! But, I'm glad you found my piece as well! In a follow-up post I actually decided to award the adjusted Olympic games to Jamaica. This is because they came second in the medals per capita and third by GDP. In fact, if you look at score (Gold = 3 points, Silver = 2 points, Bronze = 1 point), Jamaica actually came first per capita!

Note also that the Netherland Antilles place in the ranking was short-lived as their runner was disqualified and lost their medal!

I've popped all the data (including GDP results) over on Swivel and you can find everything here: http://www.swivel.com/users/show/1009803

Re: 2008 Olympic Medal Counts by Population

James Williams — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:54:00 -0000

Looking at China's totals really makes you think for a sec about how many of the kids taken from their families as toddlers to enter those athletic academies DON'T make it.

Re: 2008 Olympic Medal Counts by Population

sam — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:02:42 -0000

As I mention in the blog, I agree that this is biased against countries that are either uninterested or unable to compete. Here is the original spreadsheet if you want to mess around with it:

http://sheet.zoho.com/public/spullara/olympic-m...

Ah, should have done a quick search before bothering. Fun exercise anyway:

http://www.stubbornmule.net/2008/08/olympics-by...

Re: 2008 Olympic Medal Counts by Population

Gaurav — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 15:45:04 -0000

Why? Why would anyone do this? :)) You need to have one full america in India to win a medal. You should consider other parameters as well. Nagesh' suggestion of using quality of life (per capita income?) would be interesting to see.