A Proposal for Calculating Medal Standings

[skipaway]

Checkmate

[Prancer]

Poths, I'd be more worried that you've lost your ability to regonize a joke. Yes, there were some snippy posts earlier in this thread but it has totally given way to fooling around. No one is that serious about the bragging rights, don't worry.

As I am the only person who said something about bragging rights, I should hope not. I couldn't care less which country gets what medals; there are a few athletes I'd like to see do well, but otherwise, I don't particularly care. As I said several posts back, the US and China are big and rich and thus should be raking in the medals. It's not exactly coincidence that the biggest and richest countries also have the most medals and I would like to think that most FSU posters would both recognize this and respect the intelligence of others enough to assume others realize it as well and not think that it means anything more than that.

But if someone says "en garde!" and waves a foil repeatedly in my general direction...

I will say I'll have to remember gold, silver and bronze medals being equal whenever somebody gets about the fact the Kwan doesn't have an Olympic title.

Because all this talk of weighting medals and such has REALLY been about making them all equal.

But do feel free to poke anyone who has made that argument and then turns around and moans that Kwan doesn't have an Olympic gold. I'll even help you.

[allezfred]

It's no accident that "The Winner Takes It All" is one of my favourite songs.

If we are talking about a placing table rather than a medal one most of the ones I've seen include the results for the Top 8 in each event. You get a certificate if you finish in the first 8 at the Olympics.

[Garden Kitty]

At least one study has shown that bronze medalists tend to be happier with their medalss than silver medalists, so maybe we should count bronze medals as more valuable - at least if we want to measure a country's happiness with its results.

[Karen-W]

I thought about this thread yesterday while I was at work. I can't access FSU from my work desktop (stupid internet restrictions). However, for some reason, my 60 minutes quota time for internet surfing doesn't restrict The Guardian's London Olympics section (shocking because it blocks The Telegraph, Yahoo!Sports and pretty much any other site that's sports-related). Nevertheless, while the swimming was going on and the USA was overtaking China in the gold medal and overall medal tally, a funny thing happened on The Guardian's live blog pages. The medal tables on those pages (but not their actual medal tally page) shot GBR all the way up to 4th in the standings, ahead of Japan and South Korea even though they had less golds than KOR. Why? GBR had more medals total.

Sooooooooo... Accuse us rude 'merikans of showing the medal tally in a way that is most beneficial to our national psyche all you like. At least some Brits do the same thing!

[Ziggy]

Poor Russia and their twelve silvers.

[Karen-W]

And, since we're discussing state standings... Oregon can take credit for 1-2 in the Men's 10K, right? Mo does train here in Portland, with Galen.

[Ziggy]

At least one study has shown that bronze medalists tend to be happier with their medalss than silver medalists, so maybe we should count bronze medals as more valuable - at least if we want to measure a country's happiness with its results.

There's been a lot of studies showing that silver medallists are the least happy.

[Ziggy]

While we're evaluating alternatives, we can also consider medals counts adjusted by population, GDP and team size:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/data...eed=true#total

Mongolia seems to be having a great Olympics!

You can count on the Grauniad to do something like this.

I am really happy to see this data, as it's boring and predictable that US and China - both home to huge populations and tons of sport investment - are going to come on top of the medal tables.

[allezfred]

I thought about this thread yesterday while I was at work. I can't access FSU from my work desktop (stupid internet restrictions). However, for some reason, my 60 minutes quota time for internet surfing doesn't restrict The Guardian's London Olympics section (shocking because it blocks The Telegraph, Yahoo!Sports and pretty much any other site that's sports-related). Nevertheless, while the swimming was going on and the USA was overtaking China in the gold medal and overall medal tally, a funny thing happened on The Guardian's live blog pages. The medal tables on those pages (but not their actual medal tally page) shot GBR all the way up to 4th in the standings, ahead of Japan and South Korea even though they had less golds than KOR. Why? GBR had more medals total.

Sooooooooo... Accuse us rude 'merikans of showing the medal tally in a way that is most beneficial to our national psyche all you like. At least some Brits do the same thing!

Wheeee! Rude euro konspiracy!

A lot of the medal tables online now do have a function where you can list by total medals. In fact I think the official site in Beijing checked your ip and displayed the medal table according to which way was standard for your country (ie US/Canada way or the rest of the world way).

Do you have a link to the Guardian one?

[professordeb]

Trying to be a bit serious here for just a few seconds ... and showing my age but ...

didn't they "award" points for the top 10 finishers in each discipline/medal? I don't remember how the points were awarded but rankings were done according to the points totals and not by how many gold medals you won or your total medal count. I think it was back in the days when both the winter and summer Olympics were held in the same "year". Does anyone else remember anything along those lines or was it something that we only counted her in Canada? If anyone recalls such, I'd be interested.

OK, back to the regular bickering which I'm enjoying. Since my country is the 2nd largest country in the world in size but waaaaaaay down in population and medal standings, I will remain neutral. Bicker on!

[my little pony]

on my local news, they are doing a bit about the medals. they are saying that if you consider # of medals per population size, GB is in the lead. go host nation!

[SHARPIE]

on my local news, they are doing a bit about the medals. they are saying that if you consider # of medals per population size, GB is in the lead. go host nation!

Fecking right!

[mazzy]

on my local news, they are doing a bit about the medals. they are saying that if you consider # of medals per population size, GB is in the lead. go host nation!

umm...just a quick glance at the medal table says that Australia, Denmark should be ahead of GB. Probably another dozen or so nations that I don't care to look up the population numbers. Gutted that San Marino narrowly missed their first Olympic medal. They probably would have killed that stat.

[Proustable]

CTV and CBC are both reporting it by total medalists. The Globe and Mail and The National Post are reporting it by most golds. I'd be curious about that division elsewhere.

[maatTheViking]

I'm liking this link

http://www.medalspercapita.com/

Also, seems like Denmark is having the best Olympics since 1948 O.o. Apparently London is good for us

[Cachoo]

I'm liking this link

http://www.medalspercapita.com/

Also, seems like Denmark is having the best Olympics since 1948 O.o. Apparently London is good for us

We're #36! We're #36!

[maatTheViking]

actually the medals per GDP is interesting too - guess richer countries should have better money to train their athletes.

Poor India - no matter how you slice and dice it, they are in the bottom .

[AYS]

I think we need a medal table that includes every athlete's "backstory" along with every medal counted - you know, you put your mouse over the number and they all show up in a pulldown menu. So that we can really decide how much value we personally attribute to each medal, maybe with some accompanying video and a link to the athlete's twitter handle. Like a table of NBC fluff stories for each athlete.

[BlueRidge]

I've been gone for three days and no one has updated the stats for U.S. states?! Well, phoo.