Linden LAN » Olympics http://www.lindenlan.net Sat, 29 Nov 2014 04:54:20 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Tally Ho! Olympic Medal Rankings Should Be Weighted http://www.lindenlan.net/2008/08/24/tally-ho-olympic-medal-rankings-should-be-weighted/ http://www.lindenlan.net/2008/08/24/tally-ho-olympic-medal-rankings-should-be-weighted/#comments Mon, 25 Aug 2008 04:15:41 +0000 http://www.lindenlan.net/2008/08/24/tally-ho-olympic-medal-rankings-should-be-weighted/ The Olympics are over. However during, it annoyed me how the media outlets ranked the medal totals either counting total medals or counting total golds. Neither option accounts for the relative values of the medals. The former treats all medals as equal, whereas the former disregards the value of the other two medal colors. As others have proposed, a weighted medal count makes the most sense, the simplest being gold = 3, silver = 2, and bronze = 1. With that the top five rankings are as follows:

Country Gold Silver Bronze Weighted Total
CHN 51 21 28 223
USA 36 38 36 220
RUS 23 21 28 139
GBR 19 13 15 98
AUS 14 15 17 89

It’s interesting to note how close China and the USA match up.

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