I just wanted to say Team USA has pulled ahead, mainly cause of Track & Field, just as I predicted.
Medal count
Leaders Total
1. United States 39 25 26 90
2. China 37 24 19 80
3. Great Britain 25 13 14 52
Woot!
Well Australia just cracked the top ten, so... yeah.
London bookies are no longer taking bets on the US winning the medal count, either golds or most medals. Apparently the US is too heavily favored to win the majority of tomorrow's events or something.
Oh, and I think ESPN should get the rights to the 2016 Rio games. NBC's coverage blows chunks.
You have about 5 times our population, and less than double our gold medals, so not that impressive. :P
For fun I tallied up medals per million population for the current top few:
USA: 0.29
China: 0.06
Russia: 0.40
GB: 0.89
Germany: 0.46
Japan: 0.26
Australia: 1.33
France: 0.44
South Korea: 0.50
Canada: 0.49
GB and Australia are kicking butt for athletic ability per capita apparently.
Quote from: Firetooth on August 10, 2012, 04:59:40 AM
You have about 5 times our population, and less than double our gold medals, so not that impressive. :P
It's called Patriotism. LOL.
apparently someone beat me to this (http://www.medalspercapita.com/#medals-per-capita:2012)
Grenada kicks all the butt
QuoteYou have about 5 times our population, and less than double our gold medals, so not that impressive.
Except for the bit where we are beating China, who has like 4 times the combined population of the US and Britain.
Oh, and by the way, that's a what a loser would say. LOL.
^Yeah, well, China's medal per million population is even lousier then yours. :P
USA: 0.29
China: 0.06
GB: 0.89
Quote from: Shadow on August 10, 2012, 10:13:55 AM
GB and Australia are kicking [Behind] for athletic ability per capita apparently.
Unfortunately, all the news stories here are about how Australia has drastically underperformed.
The emphasis on sport in this country is kind of ridiculous.
China has the excuse of being possibly the least developed country on that list.
Quote^Yeah, well, China's medal per million population is even lousier then yours.
Which is my point Firegoose. It's not all about population. Also, way to redefine success. Loser. LOL.
Quote from: Shadow
China has the excuse of being possibly the least developed country on that list.
Eh, they are probably about as developed as Russia, and India isn't far behind them. Frankly though, given the amount of money China spends on it's athletes, anything less than topping the medal count is a failure for them. Just because you are a "less developed country" doesn't mean everything about you is second rate. China cares about the Olympics, it lavishes money on it's Olympic athletes and it starts training them in intensive schools sooner than pretty much any other country. When you combine that with their huge population, China should frankly dominate the Games.
Alrighty, I'm gonna be totally politically incorrect here. China of course have the most intensive training and recruiting system, but they're all Asian and are still going to be strongest in the sports typically suited to a prototypical Asian body-type. USA and GB have a more diverse ethnic pool, (i.e. black and white people) and therefore have a broader scope of success - particularly in track, where China have only won medals in the walking. If the USA and GB spent as much money and were as crazy in terms of training regimes as China, then they would kick China's butt.
Quote from: Gen. Volkov on August 11, 2012, 11:36:05 PM
Quote^Yeah, well, China's medal per million population is even lousier then yours.
Which is my point Firegoose. It's not all about population. Also, way to redefine success. Loser. LOL.
Yay for reinforcing American stereotypes!
I thought I wouldn't really get into the Olympics but it just happened. I'm really enjoying the whole thing. Today I got on my bike for the first time in years and cycled around town quite a bit.
Basically, the Olympics has motivated me to attempt to get super in-shape so I can dress up as Catwoman for Halloween.
As for countries - I'm pretty pro-Jamaica at this point, they have the slamminest outfits.
(http://i.imgur.com/XAZa4.gif)
I'm actually quite excited for the closing ceremony. I mean, sure one direction and the spice girls are there, but between Muse, George Michael, a cover of wish you were here, The Who, Ray Davies and Madness, it's going to be pretty good.
Oh, and there's this. Ok, Jessie J :-X but a Freddie Mercury hologram?
http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/news/freddie-mercury-star-closing-ceremony-102001022.html (http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/news/freddie-mercury-star-closing-ceremony-102001022.html)
Jamaica is beast at sprinting... :P
Men's marathon is in, big upset, Uganda takes gold, Kenya silver/bronze. Lone American outkicks Brazil and Japan for fourth, other 2 Americans drop out about 18k in.
^I woke up like 7:50 am, went downstairs, everyone was clustered around my brother's computer watching.
Quote from: Rakefur on August 12, 2012, 10:53:08 AM
Jamaica is beast at sprinting... :P
On the topic of Jamaican sprinters:
sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics--usain-bolt-to-get-tryout-with-manchester-united-after-olympics.html (http://sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics--usain-bolt-to-get-tryout-with-manchester-united-after-olympics.html)
Quote from: HolbyYay for reinforcing American stereotypes!
Eh, it's just fun to twit the Brits and other commonwealth folk. I don't actually care. There's one sport I care about, and it's not played in the Olympic games.
Quote from: GenevieveAlrighty, I'm gonna be totally politically incorrect here. China of course have the most intensive training and recruiting system, but they're all Asian and are still going to be strongest in the sports typically suited to a prototypical Asian body-type. USA and GB have a more diverse ethnic pool, (i.e. black and white people) and therefore have a broader scope of success - particularly in track, where China have only won medals in the walking. If the USA and GB spent as much money and were as crazy in terms of training regimes as China, then they would kick China's [Behind].
Well, China has like 1.3 billion people. I'm pretty sure that out of all those folks, they can find athletes to come close to matching the natural talents of the more diverse ethnic pools of some of the countries they face. That said, if GB and particularly the US were more dedicated to winning as many events as possible in the games, they could probably still beat China. In both countries, the absolute best athletes don't actually go to the Olympics, in the US they go to football and in Britain they go to soccer. Football has many of the same requirements to play as a track and field athlete needs, and so in the US the rule of thumb is, if you can't play football for whatever reason, you run track. I think the same is true of soccer in Britain. If the US and GB were dedicated enough to pull those athletes out of football and soccer, we'd probably send much more dominant contingents to the games. Though the US would probably still be more dominant, because it has a larger population and is more diverse than GB. GB is like 90% white, 85% of which are British.
Quote from: Firetooth on August 12, 2012, 10:58:30 AM
Quote from: Rakefur on August 12, 2012, 10:53:08 AM
Jamaica is beast at sprinting... :P
On the topic of Jamaican sprinters:
sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics--usain-bolt-to-get-tryout-with-manchester-united-after-olympics.html (http://sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics--usain-bolt-to-get-tryout-with-manchester-united-after-olympics.html)
Haha I'd laugh if he actually got in AND agreed to play.
He probably told the interviewers from all the countries the same thing.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/sport/cricket/warne-part-of-plan-to-give-bolt-a-bash-at-twenty20-20120812-2433e.html
Quote from: Gen. Volkov on August 12, 2012, 02:38:12 PM
Quote from: HolbyYay for reinforcing American stereotypes!
Eh, it's just fun to twit the Brits and other commonwealth folk. I don't actually care. There's one sport I care about, and it's not played in the Olympic games.
Rhythmic gymnastics is already at the Olympics.
Quote from: Holby on August 13, 2012, 03:30:47 AM
Quote from: Gen. Volkov on August 12, 2012, 02:38:12 PM
Quote from: HolbyYay for reinforcing American stereotypes!
Eh, it's just fun to twit the Brits and other commonwealth folk. I don't actually care. There's one sport I care about, and it's not played in the Olympic games.
Rhythmic gymnastics is already at the Olympics.
Oh I thought he meant synchronized swimming.
He said NOT at the olympics. It's probably synchronized golf.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsSPTst7yNI&feature=player_embedded (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsSPTst7yNI&feature=player_embedded)
That?
QuoteRhythmic gymnastics is already at the Olympics.
I said that I care about, not that you care about.
is it over yet? it'll be nice when everyone stops pretending to care
Relevant:
(http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r164/GenVolkov/Awesomeeagle.jpg)
Rah Rah, MURICA!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/datablog/interactive/2012/aug/07/olympics-2012-alternative-medal-table-visualised
Normalizing by team size is probably the most meaningful way to do it. I like their weighting system, as well.
Ranking goes:
China
Jamaica
Iran
Botswana
US
I don't actually care about the olympics at all (why would any county ever volunteer to host them..?), but I do care about people being ignorant of the actual meaning of statistics they are looking at. Total medal count is almost completely meaningless as a measure of anything, and it annoys the hell out of me that people are still on about it. You should know better, Volk.
Media coverage isn't helping at all, I guess they are worried about alienating their viewers if they use phrase more complicated than "look, shiny!". Props to the Guardian for actually publishing that, but really the default ranking system should be a little more complex.
Mars, now that's pretty cool.
I think there should be some sort of weighted point system, but hey! We got most golds too.
You can't deny we are the best.
Sure you can, by any meaningful definition of the word "best".
That's what I just got done saying.
More people enter = more medals. Doesn't mean the biggest team has the best athletes. The only meaningful stat is medals per ______, where _____ can be people, funding, teammates, whatever you like. But you need to normalize your stats somehow before you can compare to others in any meaningful way. How you do it is up for debate.
Stop making excuses Shadow. Raw data doesn't lie. The US has the most total and most gold medals. Finis.
Ugh. Critical thinking skills.
North Korea has a larger standing ground army than the US. Does that mean they have better soldiers? Probably not, because of differences in funding levels, technology, and training opportunities.
You guys won the most medals. That doesn't mean you have the best athletes. That's the point of this little lecture.
Again, I don't care about the Olympics. Offhand, I don't even know how Canada ended up performing, not did I watch any of it. I am trying to educate you guys about interpreting data in a meaningful way. But please continue to ignore the lesson based on the assumption that I am just jealous of 'Merika.
Raw data lies all the time. You have to learn how to extract truth from it. In this case, you do that by normalizing by some meaningful measure. Team size is a good one. Population is not bad, but it ignores economic factors that are probably fairly even across people who actually enter the olympics, eg, teams.
Another good one would be to normalize by team size, and then further normalize by average funding level per athlete on any given team. That would give you a medal per person per dollar measure which would be a reasonable (though not perfect) representation of actual skill of the athlete by removing both team size and available training opportunities bias. I am not sure if that data is easily available, though.
Here (http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/datablog/2012/aug/13/alternative-olympic-medal-table-winner-russia?newsfeed=true) is a decent (if slightly out of date) article which attempts to do exactly that (medals per person per dollar), though they use GDP per capita instead of actual average funding level. You can even download their data and analysis.
In other words: comparing raw medal counts is meaningless.
QuoteI don't actually care about the olympics at all (why would any county ever volunteer to host them..?), but I do care about people being ignorant of the actual meaning of statistics they are looking at. Total medal count is almost completely meaningless as a measure of anything, and it annoys the hell out of me that people are still on about it. You should know better, Volk.
You do get that was a joke, right? If you want to have an actual serious conversation about this, I can tell you why you are wrong about the medal count being meaningless, or at the very least why your ranking by team size is just as meaningless, but I don't actually care that much.
Yea you were joking. I am pretty sure Rakefur is being serious, though.
Well, I'd like you to give what you think would be a meaningful translation of medal count into athletic skill index. As I said, there are many different ways to normalize. But are you actually arguing that normalizing is not necessary if you want to extract a ranking of athletic ability by country?
QuoteWell, I'd like you to give what you think would be a meaningful translation of medal count into athletic skill index. As I said, there are many different ways to normalize. But are you actually arguing that normalizing is not necessary if you want to extract a ranking of athletic ability by country?
Actually I'm arguing that the Olympics are meaningless as judge of athletic ability per country. Reason being, the Olympics are a secondary consideration for athletes in most countries. The US excels because it has a lot of athletes, China excels because they are one of the few countries who actually care, past that, the top athletes in most countries don't go on the Olympic team, they go into professional sports. Because professional sports pays really well, and the Olympics mostly don't, unless you get endorsement deals, which are rare if you don't win multiple gold medals, and there are very few people who win multiple golds.
That's a fair statement. It doesn't take anything away from my point, though, which is that lots of Olympic medals says nothing about athletic ability by itself, and moreover that if any information is actually sought from the medal counts, it can't be done meaningfully with the raw data.
Whether or not there is any information to be had at all, meh. Ranking amateur athletes by country is probably the best you could get.
Well, there is more to my point, but I don't have time to get into it right now. Look for an edit later tonight.
[EDIT] Ok, so, basically, I think raw medal count does say something important. But not about athletic ability. Rather, I think raw medal count shows how well each country does at selecting it's Olympic athletes. There are countries with sizable populations, and moderate development, who do terrible at the games. Like India, for example. With 1.2 billion people, they should be just as capable as China of fielding really competitive Olympic teams. But they have a very poor selection process, and put very little money into their Olympic programs.
I'd say the only sport at the games that really showcases athletic ability by country is the basketball tournament, because it features professional basketball players, who at the very top of their sport. I'll grant you that basketball is still primarily an American sport, but I think we can all remember the failure of USA basketball to win gold at the 2004 games, which shows that the rest of the world has become a lot more competitive in that sport. The days of the 1992 Dream Team are long gone. (Did you know that in the gold medal game, the Croatian players were actually begging John Stockton to stop shooting? I find that hilarious.) I thought it was just retardedly funny when Kobe and Lebron said the 2012 squad could have beaten the '92 Dream Team. Really Kobe? Really? You barely squeak by Spain and Pau Gasol, and you think you can take on Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael freaking JORDAN?
I maintain that to measure selection accurately you need to normalize by team size. If you submit twice as many athletes there are twice as many medal opportunities, so extra medals isn't necessarily an effect of better selection in that case. Especially for olympic events like vault, diving, gymnastics, anything where you are performing rather than racing or enduring, where you only get a couple of chances, there is huge opportunity for an upset by a mediocre athlete. Even the best athletes have bad jumps on occasion, and even the worst ones get lucky sometimes (for example, that American female gymnast who was supposed to take the gold without even trying and ended up messing up her ankle and losing outright). Having more contestants greatly increases medal counts even if the athletes chosen are sub-par when there is only a small number of attempts, because luck plays a much bigger role in small sample sizes (read: in a small sample, the standard deviation is much larger).
Small attempt numbers favor mediocre athletes, in that they have the best chance of winning in a small sample of trials. If Athlete A wins 70% of the time against Athlete B who gets the other 30%, then the win rates (eg, chance of winning a majority of trials in each case) are:
1 trial: A 70%, B 30%
3 trials: A 78%, B 22%
5 trials: A 84%, B 16%
7 trials: A 87%, B 13%
etc
So no, if the number of medal attempts for each athlete is small, then flooding the podium with mediocre athletes gives more medals than picking a small number of excellent ones. Or better yet, maximal chances happen when you pick your best, and then pick a large number of athletes who can just barely qualify. The smaller than number of trials, the greater the chance of an upset. This is why hockey games are best of 7 - because it gives a much greater chance of an accurate guage of the better team.
If olympians had many chances at each event, then you would be right that team size would not matter, but in most olympic sports that is not the case.
I was being a typical American stereotype Shadow. :P
I don't think team size is really accurate. Ranking by funding might be a little better. But really I think we need to use a weighted medal count system and divide it by sport rather than bunching every sport together. Using the very populer gold=3, silver=2, bronze=1 system, in Archery, South Korea wins with 10 points, Italy/China/Japan/Mexico get 3, US gets 2.
Athletics:
US 60
Russia 39
Jamaica 24
Kenya 19
GB 15
Ethiopia 14
Notice Kenya is now in 4th, instead of 6th. I'd actually prefer an even more weighted system, like gold=10, silver=5, bronze=1. Using this system,
US 162
Russia 110
Jamaica 64
GB 46
Kenya 45
Ethiopia 38
This way, we can't say that the US has the best athletes in the world, we can only say it has the best runners in the world. (Which by the way, isn't true. The Jamaicans are better sprinters and the Kenyans are better distance runners. lol) And this way, gold is a lot more important than bronze.
See my edit above for why team size is important.
It's good to know you weren't being serious though. I facepalmed.
QuoteI maintain that to measure selection accurately you need to normalize by team size. If you submit twice as many athletes there are twice as many medal opportunities, so extra medals isn't necessarily an effect of better selection in that case. Especially for olympic events like vault, diving, gymnastics, anything where you are performing rather than racing or enduring, where you only get a couple of chances, there is huge opportunity for an upset by a mediocre athlete. Even the best athletes have bad jumps on occasion, and even the worst ones get lucky sometimes (for example, that American female gymnast who was supposed to take the gold without even trying and ended up messing up her ankle and losing outright). Having more contestants greatly increases medal counts even if the athletes chosen are sub-par when there is only a small number of attempts, because luck plays a much bigger role in small sample sizes (read: in a small sample, the standard deviation is much larger).
Yes and no Shadow. The Olympics these days seem to be gravitating more and more to events with absolute requirements for winning, and away from events that are judged. I would argue that having more athletes that are already high level performers does increase medal counts, but just having more athletes overall does not. Britain, as the host country, had the largest Olympic team at the games. But because their athletes were not as good as the Chinese and American ones, they got beat handily by both countries in the medal count, even though both countries had smaller Olympic teams. You have a point about the American gymnast, but frankly that sort of thing is rare. More common in judged events, but still rare. Mediocre athletes do not generally beat top-tier athletes. The American guy who won the 10m diving competition was already one of the best divers in the world. He had a very good day, and the Chinese guy who took silver had something of an off day, but that doesn't change the fact that the American was already an extremely good diver. He had won medals in international competitions before. Ditto the British guy who took bronze.
QuoteSo no, if the number of medal attempts for each athlete is small, then flooding the podium with mediocre athletes gives more medals than picking a small number of excellent ones. Or better yet, maximal chances happen when you pick your best, and then pick a large number of athletes who can just barely qualify. The smaller than number of trials, the greater the chance of an upset. This is why hockey games are best of 7 - because it gives a much greater chance of an accurate guage of the better team.
I get what you are saying, I just don't agree with the logic as applied to the games. Most of the events where your argument would be most true do have multiple attempts, and the ones that don't tend to be things like track, where multiple attempts wouldn't help, because some people are just faster than others.
QuoteThe American guy who won the 10m diving competition was already one of the best divers in the world. He had a very good day, and the Chinese guy who took silver had something of an off day, but that doesn't change the fact that the American was already an extremely good diver. He had won medals in international competitions before. Ditto the British guy who took bronze.
Sure, good atheletes usually beat mediocre ones. My point was that for small trial numbers (among others, vaulters and divers get only 2 jumps, right? And the soccer game were best of 1 ^_^) then the chances of an upset are maximized. Doesn't mean they are good chances, though, which is why large athlete numbers make up the difference.
This sort of thing is rare, but flooding the podium make it less so.
But yea, races and endurance events are less subject to this in general, especially long ones. However, when the time between 1st and 4th place is measured in fractions of a second, it becomes important again, because a single mis-step can cost the race. Michael Phelps also lost one of his events unexpectedly by some obscenely small fraction of a second, I forget which one. Maybe he didn't twist his arm right. It's the little things.
QuoteSure, good atheletes usually beat mediocre ones. My point was that for small trial numbers (among others, vaulters and divers get only 2 jumps, right? And the soccer game were best of 1 ^_^) then the chances of an upset are maximized. Doesn't mean they are good chances, though, which is why large athlete numbers make up the difference.
This sort of thing is rare, but flooding the podium make it less so.
Not enough to make a significant difference.
QuoteBut yea, races and endurance events are less subject to this in general, especially long ones. However, when the time between 1st and 4th place is measured in fractions of a second, it becomes important again, because a single mis-step can cost the race. Michael Phelps also lost one of his events unexpectedly by some obscenely small fraction of a second, I forget which one. Maybe he didn't twist his arm right. It's the little things.
200m butterfly, he glided in instead of taking an extra stroke like the guy who won. Lost by 4 one hundreths of a second. But the guy he lost too was one of the top swimmer's in the world, from a fairly small team. Which kinda reinforces my point.
Normalizing medals by team size just doesn't make sense to me, because if a team with 4 athletes medals, they get an absurdly high ranking, but it doesn't show anything except they have one really good athlete in 1 particular sport.
QuoteNormalizing medals by team size just doesn't make sense to me, because if a team with 4 athletes medals, they get an absurdly high ranking, but it doesn't show anything except they have one really good athlete in 1 particular sport.
You can't reasonably rank any team with a very small medal count anyway no matter how you cut the stats. At the end of the day, the sample size is just too small for your results to be an accurate representation of anything. I'm assuming here that the count is high enough to be useful, so I am talking about ranking the top medal count countries, say everyone over 15 medals.
QuoteNot enough to make a significant difference.
In a large number of trials, I agree. For 1-3 trial events, it's significant.
QuoteYou can't reasonably rank any team with a very small medal count anyway no matter how you cut the stats. At the end of the day, the sample size is just too small for your results to be an accurate representation of anything. I'm assuming here that the count is high enough to be useful, so I am talking about ranking the top medal count countries, say everyone over 15 medals.
15 is probably still too small, but that does make more sense.
QuoteIn a large number of trials, I agree. For 1-3 trial events, it's significant.
I disagree, since most of the mediocre athletes will get knocked out in the prelims. You can't flood the podium with mediocre athletes, because the whole design of the Olympics is to weed out the mediocre ones and pit the best against each other. The finals may be 1 event or a small number, but you have to remember the huge number of preliminary runs that lead up to the finals.