Information Research Weblog

A little light relief for Friday. The allocation of medals at the World Athletics Championships in Paris gave me pause for thought. Great rejoicing in the USA that once again, they topped the table, gloom in the UK at the lack of gold medals and, presumably, great rejoicing in Russia at its haul.

However - I got to wondering. Given the differences in population of these countries, how many medals might they be expected to win - all things being equal, which, of course, they never are.

The answer was quite interesting. I assigned 4 points to a gold, 2 to a silver and 1 to a bronze. Thus, Ethiopia with 3G, 2S and 2B scores 30 points. The total population of the countries in the medal table is 4,099,683,500 and Ethiopia has 1.49% of this population. If it was to win medals on the basis of population from which to draw competitors alone, it should have 5 points - in other words, it actually did six times better than would be expected. The USA - top of the medal table - only did 2.4 times better.

On this basis, the top ten countries would be:

1. St. Kitts and Nevis
2. Qatar
3. Bahamas
4. Jamaica
5. Belarus
6. Estonia
7. Trinidad and Tobago
8. Sweden
9. Lithuania
10. Greece

So let's hear it for the real winners! On this basis the USA would be 24th position and the UK in 32nd.

However, population doesn't tell the whole story - perhaps Gross National Income, indicating wealth, would be a better measure. Again, the points were assigned in the same way, but this time I simply looked at the difference between the 'predicted' points and the actual. On this basis, the top ten countries were:

1. Russia
2. Ethiopia
3. Belarus
4. Kenya
5. Morocco
6. South Africa
7. Sweden
8. Jamaica
9. Greece
10. Cuba

I hear you complain. OK - using the same method of comparison as with population, the top ten are:

1. Saint Kitts and Nevis
2. Ethiopia
3. Belarus
4. Jamaica
5. Mozambique
6. Kenya
7. Estonia
8. Lithuania
9. Morocco
10. Ecuador

Qatar would have been in there, but I couldn't find GNI data anywhere.

And the bottom ten? CANADA, MEXICO, USA, ITALY, GREAT BRITAIN & N.I., GERMANY, INDIA, BRAZIL, PR OF CHINA and JAPAN in 42nd position.

So - it's the old story, really: "it's the rich wot get the pleasure" while the real achievements of the poor go unnoticed.