Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2014 Winter Olympics medals per capita and per GDP


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:57, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

2014 Winter Olympics medals per capita and per GDP

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Nothing to indicate notability, and is mostly original research. Smartyllama (talk) 21:28, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete WP:OR and trivia at best.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 13:54, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep The topic is covered by several mainstream media, therefore it does not meet criteria for WP:OR, so your arguments are not valid. DancingPhilosopher  ( talk ) 16:04, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete. If this article can be created, then according to this reference that was on this article, why not Gold Medals per capita and per GDP?  Why not Medals per how many competitors that was sent by each national team at the Olympics?  There could be many possibilities.--Koresdcine (talk) 19:22, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The Atlantic has statistics of medals per 10 Olympians (Netherlands a clear winner in front of Belarus and Norway), so this could be included in the article as well. There are many reliable sources which are covering alternative medal tabels; I actually believe there are more reliable sources for this article than for most list articles. Iselilja (talk) 20:39, 23 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Absolutely '''KEEP". This is a valid and useful statistic and the only ones who want rid of it is those who don't look so good. The rest of the arguments are window dressing.--Achim Hering (talk) 23:31, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * WP:ITSUSEFUL. Double check. And mate. Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 09:17, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Of course there is no shortage of rules and regulations on here to couch the window dressing. In the beltway, that's known as spin. Here's a little more trivia for you: CNN's coverage on the Olympics showed the US in a more prominent position than the International Olympic Committee does. Gold is worth more than silver or bronze. So Germany was in the lead for a while. The US were further down the list - but not on CNN! CNN invented its own metric: The number of medals per country, as though a bronze had the same value as gold. By that measure, the US fared much better. I'll bet you dollars to donuts that if positions had been reversed and the US had had the most gold but not so many second and third and also-rans, then CNN would have chosen to adopt the IOC's method of national ranking. One lone anchor challenged this: Chris Cuomo. He pointed out that the reason they showed the rankings this way was, in his words "...because it works for us". Then Kate Bolduan chimed in: "No, no, it's by the number of medals"... Of course. USA#1! Unqualified. #1 at absolutely everything? Like soccer? Or modesty, or politeness? High school math and science scores? If you're #1, then that makes everybody else #2 or worse, right? Here's the relevance to this article: The US slides way down the list when you re-shuffle the rankings by population and by GDP. That makes people feel uncomfortable. Also, look who is last. I believe that this is the reason to look for rules and regulations within Wikipedia to delete this and pounce on usefulness - God forbid! We have rules about that! It does not fix the fact that it has been mentioned in the media, which wreaks havoc with other window dressing arguments. I also agree with other contributors to this talk page that funding per athlete is of interest, as is the number of athletes who qualified to go to the Olympics compared to population and GDP and then how did they do? If you don't think funding matters, consider a twenty something adult, who is probably not making much money yet and having to train to beat the best in the world. That takes time and money and the outcome is uncertain. Now, is that athlete having to hold down a gig to support a family or being bankrolled by the state to be able to train all the time? And then once it's all over, what about the gap in that person's career? I suppose it's all the same for hockey players, who make good money in the NHL, but what about the sports that hardly anybody cares about outside of the Olympics? Honestly how many people buy tickets and travel to see national or even world championships in figure skating? How much news coverage and advertising sales during those events compared against well-funded sports with wide appeal like football, hockey, basketball? Or how about the UFC? The fastest growing sport. Try to negotiate a prime time network coverage deal for snowboarding or figure skating - or better yet, a pay per view event! People pay $66 to see a numbered UFC event. Ever see that for figure skating? Not on your Nelly. You bet money matters, ergo the interest for investigative journalists and also enough of the public in the topic. I stand by my argument. Anything other than not wanting one's own country to look worse is window dressing and finding rules and regs to support it whilst ignoring other valid arguments (such as press coverage), as well as frowning on evaluations of motivation and using that against the evaluator, is par for the course--Achim Hering (talk) 05:13, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
 * That's a real pretty rant speech. All for nothing though.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 18:57, 26 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Absolutely strong delete This is trivia and OR/Syhnthesis per Lugnuts. I would also add this is not notable beyond a personal web log and its pov. There is no such criteria for this in the plympics, heck even the total tally is not officially kept. NO reason whatsoever to give one NZL website such credence.Lihaas (talk) 00:19, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete. Yes, it is interesting and draws attention especially from small nations that end up on top, but on the other hand, this is trivia. For the same reason, I've recently nominated List of multiple gold medalists ranked by share of won Olympic events. --Tone 15:08, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete for all the reasons previously given at Articles for deletion/1996 Summer Olympics medals per capita, Articles for deletion/2004 Summer Olympics Medals Earned Per Capita, and Articles for deletion/2008 Summer Olympics medals per capita. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:39, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sports-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:58, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:58, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Strong Keep This information actually represents how well a country can exploit its net man-power and resources to win the most medals and as such gives the picture of the most competitive countries. The ranking is completely different from the Medals tally and so gives a very important dimension that cannot be inferred from only the Medals Tally. Why should such important information be considered as trivia?? Even if such information has been deleted from other Olympic games pages, its time that we re-evaluate the importance of such information. When we give the most importance to measures such as Population Density, Percentage and Per capita income while analyzing any set of data, why should this similar data be treated trivial?? Even if it is decided to delete this page,these 2 tables should be included in the medals page Gurumoorthy Poochandhai  22:31, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete as original research and previous consensus. Only one of the keeps give any policy based rationale. Secret account 22:44, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete: Original research, useless information, and nationalistic nonsense. During the 2008 Summer Olympics a similar thing was done by people trying to justify some fringe POV view regarding medal counts. -- benlisquare T•C•E 00:15, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I am appalled by how you all are trying to skip the fact this list is sourced by the mainstream media (the NZL website is only cited indirectly via the proper mainstream media citation). I wonder just how long are you going to repeat false accusations of original research despite it? Do you really feel so threatened by smaller nations' relatively higher per-Capita and per-GDP ranks that the emotions diminished your ability to see the mainstream media sources? -- DancingPhilosopher ( talk ) 10:55, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * How about you avoid the personally targeted arguments and stick to Wikipedia policy? Do I look Russian, Canadian or United Statian to you? Where is my vodka bottle, balalaika, maple syrup and hamburger? Wikipedia is WP:NOT an indiscriminate repository of information. We've had people stating that we should keep this page because "it is useful". How is it useful? Nobody has explained to me why such information is useful for an encyclopedia, they've merely stated that it's useful. Ever heard of "show, don't tell"? Show me how encyclopedic this page is, because I don't see it. What's next, "List of countries by burrito manufacturing by GDP"? "List of countries with numbers of cities and towns that start with the letter B"? "List of countries by penis size per capita"? I can assure you that many Australians have huge dicks, and we also have a population of 23 million, isn't that amazing? How is this trivial nonsense worthy of an encyclopedia? Circlejerking over Olympic medals "per capita" is just like circlejerking over national penis size averages, it's stupid nationalistic fanwanking, and is hardly educational. -- benlisquare T•C•E 11:17, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Please, read why money is a relevant factor in winter sports, despite your idealistic crap on individual success not depending on GDP and the size of a country's "pool of DNA" with a required potential for the top results to select from. Learn some basic statistics and samples and then come talk. Also, may I ask you where did you see me making personally targeted argument? It was a size-of-country targeted and where have you seen me mentioning "usefulness"? Not anywhere. It was somebody else who brought it up, not me. Read again and then stop putting somebody else's words into my mouth. It is not polite. I only stick to the WP rule saying that articles have to be sourced by mainstream media. That is all that is required, being sourced by mainstream media. You want to be funny with your made-up ad hoc lists? Well, you are not. Show me one mainstream media article writing about any of your lists? -- DancingPhilosopher  ( talk ) 14:10, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep ...the size of a country and how much capital it puts towards 'owning the podium' is a valid topic. It is not OR as it has been covered by many mainstream media. Some countries are not shy about putting serious capital towards swaying the results, either by funding or increasing the number of athletes per sport. HJKeats (talk)


 * Delete non notable trivia. Also the choice for these 2 is arbitrary. I suggest tables corrected for home advantage, per capita spending on sports, social status associated with sports victory, proportion of national sports being Olympic sports, amount of money earned in historical slave trade, average height, weight of inhabitants, for wintergames latitude and altitude of country (as these measures will say a lot about availability of ice and snow, as well as slopes needed for skiing) - these tables should of course also be provided corrected for warming effects of the Gulfstream. As said before, the possibilities are endless. This is going to a POV fork for what is mainly trivia. Arnoutf (talk) 18:09, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete, as Olympic medals per capita and per GDP is absolute nonsense. Please let me tell you why:


 * Per capita & per GDP ≠ effort of a nation.
 * Per capita & per GDP are both ratings/measurements that involve the whole population of a country.


 * The GDR, for example, had a population of approx. 16 million - and a GDP certainly lower than that of the USA - yet the Olympic sports program of the GDR probably did receive more funding. Search for talent was "reason of state".


 * So, the real question is: how much money did a country invest for the advancement and training → of how many athlethes → athlethes competing in the games → divided by medal results. To create such a table is almost impossible and certainly would be original research. --IIIraute (talk) 19:17, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Merge into 2014 Winter Olympics medal table [didn't see anyone mention above]. i know there are lots of variables you can compare but gdp and population are pretty standard. Tom B (talk) 11:27, 26 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment, addition to the medal table article was proposed, but consensus there at this moment is not to do so. Also you say it is pretty standard to compare GDP and population implying it is not the case for other variables. Can you support that with a reliable source? Arnoutf (talk) 21:06, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Tom B (talk) 12:23, 28 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Echoing the above, per Talk:2014 Winter Olympics medal table, the current community WP:CONSENSUS is to not include GDP/population comparisons within that page. You might even say that 2014 Winter Olympics medals per capita and per GDP was created as a WP:POVFORK following failure to gain consensus at that talk page. -- benlisquare T•C•E 02:02, 27 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete. Nonsense. HandsomeFella (talk) 16:56, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete. Per previous consensus. --Life is like a box of chocolates (talk) 17:00, 26 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Reluctant weak keep. Various reliable sources such as the Guardian newspaper have chosen to report these findings. This superficially appears to be an encyclopedic topic and therefore should be included in Wikipedia. However the sources have failed to describe the limitations of this "statistical" analysis. The main issue is that most countries have no medals or only a few medals each. This means that a small variation in that number creates a large percentage change. The analysts should have undertaken linear regression. However with 62 countries out of 88 getting no medals, the regression line will be almost flat. Thus the correlation of any given factor with the number of medals will be very poor, making the exercise worthless. It would be ideal if a reliable source published this information, but no-one is going to do so because it proves that the exercise is pointless. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  16:45, 27 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment There actually ARE econometric, linear regression based models to predict medals see e.g. . I could imagine brief mention of such methods supported by high quality sources might make for a short paragraph on the medal table page (but probably not be enough for a separate article). Arnoutf (talk) 18:25, 27 February 2014 (UTC)


 * PS Dutch newspaper Volkskrant compared different predictions (may require account) and found sports analysts looking at previous performance did not worse than advanced econometric models for these wintergames. Arnoutf (talk) 18:41, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the blog link. The negative binomial regression described in the paper is beyond my understanding of statistics. However I have a couple of observations. Importantly, the 2004 Summer Olympics on which the paper is based had 201 competing countries, of which 74 won at least one medal&mdash;a proportion of 37%. In the 2014 Winter Olympics 30% won at least one medal. Moreover, the smaller number of medals in the 2014 Olympics&mdash;295 vs. 927&mdash;gives random variations a much greater impact, making statistical significance far less likely. Curiously, the author does not state the magnitude of the effect. The paper finishes with the statement "Another (possible related) topic for further research would account for the large number of zero medals (69 in the sample), perhaps by employing a zero-inflated count data model." This makes me wonder if the analysis ignored all the zero-medal countries. Axl  ¤  [Talk]  00:43, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I am not sure what they did, most econometrics is beyond me too. If you have a large overrepresentation of zeroes, data distribution assumptions no longer hold. This is often ignored (in which case explained variance makes little sense) or indeed dealt with by deleting the zeroes. Zero-inflated methods are specifically developed to deal with many zeroes in a sample (e.g. by parceling them out in a first analysis and then conditionally on predictions to split off the zeroes predicting the rest of the curve.... or something similar, I really am not on top with the specifics so forgive me if this is completely wrong). Arnoutf (talk) 18:26, 28 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete Per previous arguments from IIIraute I personally think that this article is not needed. BrandonWu (talk) 02:55, 28 February 2014 (UTC
 * Weak Keep, without any great enthusiasm, but it seems notable and reputable outlets are reporting this and as such it's not WP:OR. Lankiveil (speak to me) 07:14, 1 March 2014 (UTC).


 * Comment WP:OR is only one reason for inclusion, that sources are notable does not make the subject notable per se (many non-notable people have a memorial advertisement published in a notable source on their death). Arnoutf (talk) 16:12, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment With a slightly diminished enthusiasm, as Lankiveil said for himself above, I will ask you a question as politely as possible since I have just realized you are the Arnoutf who welcomed me on my talk page in 2007. Do you really believe that journalistic sources published in notable media should be treated as mere advertisements in this particular case? -- DancingPhilosopher ( talk ) 14:21, 3 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete as non notable list, Fails OR. →Davey 2010→  →Talk to me!→  15:38, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.