Stats in the Wild

Which country wins the Olympics? Right now China is in the lead for most medals (73: 34 gold, 21 silver, 18 bronze) and most golds. The USA is second in both categories (71: 30 gold, 19 silver, 22 bronze). In 2008 there was some controversy about whether the ranking should be done by largest total number of medals or largest golds; here’s the table from Wikipedia. If I recall correctly (though it’s surprisingly hard to search for this) non-Americans were saying that the “right” way to do it is by golds, but Americans insisted on doing it by total medals. Not surprisingly the USA had the most total medalists in ’08 (110, to China’s 100) but not the most golds (36, to China’s 51).

But it hardly seems fair to expect, say, France to get as many medals as the USA, simply because they have about one-fifth the population…