User talk:Medalstats

Medal Tally POVs
The history of Olympic medal tallies here at Wikipedia shows that they have been used to promote various point of views (POVs). Here is a little list:


 * IOC POV: the International Olympic Committee IOC rejects medal tallies and rankings of nations. All ranks should be deleted. Possibly all medal tables should be deleted. Example source: Sports Illustrated


 * Mass Media POV: the IOC may reject medal tallies, but the audience wants them anyway. CNN and NBC and others rank nations by the total number of medals, BBC and others by gold.


 * US POV: Do not delete the all time medal tallies, but list only the numbers of medals per nation, without indicating how often each nation took part in the Olympics. This would make the USA look pretty good, since it participated almost every time. Also delete nations that do not exist any more. Example source: Tarik's sport ratings


 * Soviet POV 1: The all time medal tallies should also provide the number of participations per country, because the USSR participated rarely, but usually won the medal count whenever they did.


 * Soviet POV 2: There should be a table with all nations listed on both dimensions, for each pair of nations providing the score: how often did one beat the other in the total medal count when both participated? Since the USSR beat the other nations almost every time they participated (for example, Winter total medal count victories: USSR vs USA 9:0, Summer: 6:2, Total: 15:2), the USSR would look pretty good.


 * European POV: The tallies should have an entry for the EU, just like GDP tables etc. usually have an entry for the EU - see List of countries by GDP %28nominal%29. Since the EU has collected several times as many medals  as its nearest competitor, the EU would look pretty good. Example source: Washington Times


 * German POV: Sum up the medals of all the former fragments of Germany (for example, 520 golds). That would make Germany look pretty good. Example source: All time winter count


 * Soviet POV 3: Then also add the medals for USSR and CIS, which is basically USSR under a different name. Finally, add the medals of Russia, the geopolitical heir of the USSR. Example source at Wikipedia: All time winter medal tally


 * Small nation POV: The medal tallies should include a column providing the medals per capita. This would make Norway and Australia and other small nations look many times better than any of the large nations. Example sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics and Austria's Sport1.at

Is there a satisfactory way of addressing these different POVs? Medalstats 16:52, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

How to Reconcile Most Medal Tally Issues
I think it would be a good idea to make a table that provides all the relevant information at a glance: the medals, the number of participations, the average number of medals and golds per Games, the number of medal count victories and gold count victories (also per Games), and the average number of people per medal and per gold. Like in the example below (numbers rounded to the nearest integers). Maybe we should not use the population of 2006 for the per capita data of the all time medal tallies, but instead average out the medal per capita data for all years when the nation participated.

In separate rows (below the blue line, marked by asterisks*), the relevant data should also be provided for countries / organizations that had several National Olympic Committees in the past, such as Germany (East, West), USSR/CIS, and the EU, to the extent that these are widely recognized and a general interest in such matters is reflected by other articles inside and outside of Wikipedia.

The table below is limited to medal count winners; nevertheless it might serve as a role model for extended tables encompassing all nations.

No rankings are given, since different nations rank first in different disciplines. For example, Norway leads in the category "medal count wins per capita", East Germany in the category "average number of medals per capita", the USA in the categories "absolute number of medals" and "gold count wins" (ignoring the EU as a whole), the USSR in the categories "medals per Games" and "medal count wins per Games", etc. Colors gold, silver, bronze indicate the first three in each explicitly given category. Medalstats 12:59, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Soon I'll try to make an entry called Olympic Medal Statistics: Medal Count Winners. Medalstats 15:52, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

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joturn e r 16:53, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Rankings by other means (other than US POV)
Flaws:
 * Ranking by "Medals per Games"/"Golds per Games" - what to make of countries that only participated in early Olympic games, or only in Winter Olympic games, where the number of available medals were much lower? Suppose country "A" only participated in the early Summer Olympic games, and country "B" only participated in the later Summer Olympic Games. Country "B" has the potential to amass many more medals, and hence more "Medals per Games" and "Golds per Games". Correct?
 * Ranking by "People per medal per Games"/"People per gold per Games" - most (if not all) events are restricted to a set number of participants or teams per country. Countries with a large population can not always reap the benefits of their large population. Potentially, they could win more medals if allowed to field an unlimited number of athletes per event. For example, county "A" may have the best three boxers in each weight division, but since they can only send at most one boxer per division, they can only win one medal per division.
 * Also, your population figures are as of NOW. Your figures suggest that the United States was bigger than the USSR during the period when both participated in the Olymipc games. For the entire period that they competed against each other, the USSR was significantly larger. For example, in 1970, the population of the USSR was approximately 242 million and the population of the United States was just 203 million. This would significantly alter the numbers.
 * Also, refer to my point about "Medals per Games"/"Golds per Games", it applies here as well.
 * Lumping countries together, such as the "European POV", "German POV", and "Soviet POV 3" - again, most (if not all) events are restricted to a set number of participants or teams per country. In Olympic boxing, for example, members of the EU could amass THIRTY-THREE medals per Summer Olympic Games, whereas the United States could only garner eleven.

Trying to rank by any other means beside the "US POV" is fraught with potential problems, given the ever changing number of medals given out at the Olympic games and the ever changing populations of the countries (which primarily don't take a census during most Olympic years, by the way). Phizzy 16:42, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Your table shows the European Union taking part in 45 Olympiads. How did it do that, when it didn't exist until 1993?

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Put it in the Olympics article
I have added some of the info here (plus some links) to Olympic Games. Alas the above list does not include all countries. Smaller ones could end up surprisingly high. DirkvdM 12:53, 15 July 2007 (UTC)