It’s OK, the US finally caught up to China in golds so we don’t need to make up these crazy weighted tables anymore just to have the US at the top instead of China. 🤣
Instead of weighted tables, they could rate based on the number of guns per capita!
I think the weighted ones should be more commonly used. Ignoring everything but gold sucks for the athletes that put in a ton of effort to get silver and bronze. Counting all medals equally discounts the discrepancy between winning and finishing 3rd.
What’s the idea behind the weighted ones? I could take an educated guess as 3/2/1 (all medals but weighted towards Gold) but then 4/2/1 through me off
Definitely correlates to the number of athletes each country sent. Wonder how this would look if normalized by number of events each country participated in.
Now weight to population size and GDP!
The solution to end this debate once and for all would be to ask the athletes competing in the Olympics “How many silvers are worth a gold” and “how many bronzes are worth a silver.” Then use the results to weight the results.
We mortals can debate the right weights to use, but the real answer is to ask the athletes.
Now do 4-2-1 per capita! Show me the over performers!
Uzbekistan really stands out there for me. It seems very gold-heavy and overall strong performance considering their population + wealth level, the countries above them are significantly advantaged in one or both ways. They seem very strong in combat sports, pretty cool.
The US is pretty average and China is downright terrible in relation to the population. Countries like New Zealand, the Netherlands, Australia and Hungary are consistently performing at the very top.
You should add Texas to the list.
They should do weighted medals then ratio to the amount of teams/athletes that the country actually sent. They would give a true indication of what team actually performed the best. Countries with the most people (US, China, Australia, Japan) will always be at the top of the medal count, no matter what
![[OC] Comparison of Medal Tables](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/rmy7jrw3l8id1.png)
13 comments
Created using Excel.
Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Summer_Olympics_medal_table](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Summer_Olympics_medal_table)
It’s OK, the US finally caught up to China in golds so we don’t need to make up these crazy weighted tables anymore just to have the US at the top instead of China. 🤣
Instead of weighted tables, they could rate based on the number of guns per capita!
I think the weighted ones should be more commonly used. Ignoring everything but gold sucks for the athletes that put in a ton of effort to get silver and bronze. Counting all medals equally discounts the discrepancy between winning and finishing 3rd.
What’s the idea behind the weighted ones? I could take an educated guess as 3/2/1 (all medals but weighted towards Gold) but then 4/2/1 through me off
Definitely correlates to the number of athletes each country sent. Wonder how this would look if normalized by number of events each country participated in.
Now weight to population size and GDP!
The solution to end this debate once and for all would be to ask the athletes competing in the Olympics “How many silvers are worth a gold” and “how many bronzes are worth a silver.” Then use the results to weight the results.
We mortals can debate the right weights to use, but the real answer is to ask the athletes.
Now do 4-2-1 per capita! Show me the over performers!
Uzbekistan really stands out there for me. It seems very gold-heavy and overall strong performance considering their population + wealth level, the countries above them are significantly advantaged in one or both ways. They seem very strong in combat sports, pretty cool.
[I personally like the table adjusted by population.](https://www.medalspercapita.com/#medals-per-capita:2024) That’s the most useful way to compare the results of the individual countries.
The US is pretty average and China is downright terrible in relation to the population. Countries like New Zealand, the Netherlands, Australia and Hungary are consistently performing at the very top.
You should add Texas to the list.
They should do weighted medals then ratio to the amount of teams/athletes that the country actually sent. They would give a true indication of what team actually performed the best. Countries with the most people (US, China, Australia, Japan) will always be at the top of the medal count, no matter what