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Olympic Medal Prediction Model
bettiwettiwoo writes "Slate reports that PricewaterhouseCooper claims to have devised a model predicting the final medal tally for nations competing in the Olympic Games. GDP is of particular importance in bringing home the bacon, closely followed by population size and and past performance. Other factors can also affect the outcome: hosting the games usually gives a medal boost. With the possible exception of China, the titan nations of the games (US, Russia, China and Germany) are predicted to see a successive drop in their total medal tally in the future (and compared to the Sydney Games, the future starts now). So if you were wondering why the Iraqi soccer team seems on its way to the quarter finals, why Greece takes gold in synchronized diving, or why Michael Phelps has to eat Ian Thorpe's bubbles, don't worry: it's only evolution, baby, and it's all perfectly predictable!"
I'm sure Mandelbrot will claim to predict this sooner or later.
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Well, the way this article is written, it's not so much skill that they're focusing on, though it's not really evolution either... it seems more like sociology, and the "evolution" of civilizations... So, evolution works, but not so much the biological aspects of it. Skill (and, to some extent, yes biological evolution, and sometimes drugs =)) is the deciding factor for a single person gaining a gold medal, but this isn't about what specific people are getting the medals, but what amount a country will get.
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There are lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
This might sound good and all, but comon, this just reinforces common sense.
Ok, if country A has lots of money, then they can train thier athletes.
If country A has had good athletes before, it stands that they will have good athelets in the future.
The question I ask, did this predict Thorpeo's upset of the American swimmer? I think not
--sig fault--
I agree that skill and evolution are not the same, but we are also looking at is the "specialist" problem.
The so-called "first-world" nations can have a specialty programs to develop the skills of their atheletes, not to mention be able to identify potential atheletes through their education systems. Smaller nations cannot devote the manpower or economy to such programs. It is interesting to note that there is a lag function involved using prior achievement to show the effectiveness of the national athletic organizations. So what we are looking at is the skill of individuals being improved through the improvement of all athletic programs.
I think this is an interesting proof that the world quality of life is leveling off.
When you take into account the size and prosperity of the nations competing, and measure it against their actual performance...
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/sydney/story/0,7369,3
The winner is Cuba....
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Mods, bear with me if this seems OT. A history buff friend of mine tells me that there are two main theories of historical development. One is the 'great man theory', where the course of history is determined by great (as in influential, not necessarily nice) individuals. The other is a view that history is inexorably driven by economic and social conditions that lead to inevitable outcomes (think Asimov's 'psychohistory'). Clearly, we're no where close to being able to test these theories empirically.
It strikes me that creating this model for olympic medal winners could provide an excellent 'lab expermient' to test this outstanding question in the philosophy of history. In many ways, international sports resemble international relations (rivalry, preparation, 'war', great (wo)men, winners, losers, etc.). If models can predict medal outcomes with acceptable accuracy, it could provide evidence against the 'great man theory' of history, and imply that a version of 'psychohistory' might be possible in the future!
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Wealthy countries with a larger pool of potential athletes, who have been consistently successful in recent history, and have a government who sponsors athletics, will win more medals.
For my next trick, I shall predict what date Christmas will be on - using only the last 400 years of the Gregorian Calendar, minus the bits where they fsked up.
And no smart asses talking about Orthodox Christmas.
In other news, PWC open the worlds largest betting office...
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I think the statistic of medals by country is boring - of course bigger countries are likely to get more medals.
I think medals per capita of population is a much more interesting statistic, and show how well certain countries (like Australia) do.
Since nobody else has pointed it out, the results so far seem to suggest that China is actually going to do much better than this prediction suggests.
who has the best doping doctors who get past detection.
Why does everyone insist on viewing doping as a "black-and-white" issue?
The human body is a very complex machine. The chemical reactions that take place in side are very complicated and sensitive. Athletes carefully monitor their nutrition, and supplement their bodies with well-timed servings of synthetic protein, creatine, and other compounds and hormones. Where do you draw the line? Should it be illegal to take protein shakes? What if a competitor eats a huge number of chicken breasts? Or drinks more than the allowable portions of milk?
My point in all this is that there are many things that affect an athlete's ability to perform. You can't just say, "that guy was doping, so he's a cheat. Everyone else passed the doping tests, so they're all honest, supreme athletes." It's not that simple. They're all taking complex coctails of nutrients and supplements. They all take vitamins, energy bars, protein shakes, creatine, testosterone, lactic-acid inhibitors, and who-knows-what else. If one of them accidentally takes just a few too many grams of one of his supplements, he/she could set off the doping alarm, and fail the test. That doesn't mean they deliberately cheated, unless you consider all the other athletes to be "cheating" too, when they follow their artificial diets.
NO ONE competes "naturally" anymore, in the sense that they just eat plain old food, sleep when they feel like it, and then compete. They all have carefully-monitored sleep cycles and diets. They're treated like machines, like high-performance engines. They're groomed to compete, sometimes even to the degree that they're supposed to peak on the day of their competition (that is, if you asked them to re-run their competition the next day, their time wouldn't be anywhere near the time they were able to turn in the day before).
So what's the answer? Ban all supplements? All protein powders? Energy bars? Low-fat foods? Forbid athletes from taking more than 8 hours of sleep a night? Should we try to make sure everyone is on equal footing? Or do we allow them to do everything they can to hone their bodies into high-performance machines that'll break records (and thus, attract ratings, sponsors, and ad revenue)?
Who's to say that a mild steroid is cheating, but a rigorous diet of protein shakes, Myoplex, ephedrine, Xenadrine, selenium, and whatever else is OK?
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No, not entirely.
Look at is this way: the best long distance runners are generally from under developed locales in Africa, where, for many people, running is essential just to get places in a timely manner.
A good runner is going to be prime mating candidate, and may very likely choose another good runner. Over just a few generations, this can have an amazing effect.
Of course that doesn't happen everywhere - but I think athletes are more likely to marry athletes in just about any country. After all, they spend all day training with other athletes.
So it may not be specific countries, but athletes in cold weather climates tend to participate in cold weather sports. People in warm climates tend to participate in warm weather sports. Now repeat the process of athletes who tend to look for good physical specimens as mates, and you do see an evolution.
Well, you might call it voluntary genetic engineering. Here in Georgia, USA, some idiots call it "biological changes over time" because they refuse to use the word "evolution." Whatever it is, it's real and it happens.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Nothing to do with the amount of money their country has to pump into sports, the facilities they have grown up with, who has the best doping doctors who get past detection.
:-)
Your sarcasm is well placed. The UK is a good example of a nation with a reasonable population (over 60 million - ranking 21st in total), a high GNP (4th highest in the world), but which severely lacks in Olympic performance and medal tally. Why? We just don't have the faculties.
And, rather uncoincidentally, the news over the past couple of days has been talking about how we need to nurture and recognise sporting talent in schools a lot better...
All this said, I can't see why being great at the Olympics is so amazing in itself. Sure, it's a nice ego boost to a country, but England would get more out of winning the World Cup than scooping a bunch of golds at an event almost no Brit watches.
I know a lot of Americans are disappointed that Team USA(TM) is not doing its usual thing of clearing up most of the medals at the olympic games, as has happened in most of the olympics in past decades, but I fail to see the reason why. The Americans are doing very well nonetheless and will probably move up in medal listings as the games progress, although I suspect that China will be the overall winner this year.
;)
I think a lot of comments about how boring the olympics are has to do with that dented national pride as well as the fact that Americans are somewhat less sporty than average (pure speculation based on hamburger consumption) although women's beach volleyball certainly has done wonders for viewing quotas
Another problem is that Americans, IMO, tend to overhype anything they see as a potential winner. The NYTimes had an article last week "Built To Swim" on Michael Phelps, heaping praise onto the young man in a manner similar to the way that MacDonalds visitors heap extra dressing onto their food in no less than four pages. If that wasn't building the man up for a fall then I don't know what was. Michael Phelps is an amazing swimmer, make no mistake, but so are Ian Thorpe and Pieter van den Hoogenband and both have the advantage of experience in coping with olympic nerves.
I also suspect that Americans, who invested large sums in sport during the cold war in the war of national prestige over the east block, and cruised along in the post cold war years after their former competitors fell apart, are now suffering from a lack of focus and the fact that other emerging nations such as Australia have a better focus in winning at the games.
But cheer up. If China does emerge as an international competitor to the US, I'm sure that the US will once again knuckle down and get that sweat pouring for some national prestige.
I hate medal counts. I thought the olympics were about bringing countries together and sharing a similar culture through sporting events that we all seem to understand.
I don't get out much and don't travel much and don't see that much. I like to take a look at the starting blocks and see that everyone looks the same. A swimmer is a swimmer the world around, no matter what nationality they are from. Same build, same posture, same look and everything.
But please, please don't judge everyone based on their media. I hate our media and can't stand watching tv. The olympics are the most tv i've watched in the past few years (since the last ones), and I don't pay attention to it for the same reasons you state. It's all complete bs. Well, I guess that does represent the majority of people. Oh well.
Totally agreed. While eventually US would win both in medal and gold counts, it's the gold medals that really count. For example, as of now China has 16 medals but 10 of them are gold (63%), while US has 13 medals while only 3 of them are gold (23%). Clearly the medal counts do not relect the true dominance of a country's performance.
Another reason for using gold counts is that some sports allow only one athlete per country. So the country that send out more athletes could have a better chance in winning more medals, but that doesn't reflect the true excellence of a country in sports because some smaller country with a smaller delegate might win gold in those single-athlete events!
The first 4 minute mile was recorded in 1770 by one James Parrott
Marathon events including times of 2 hrs 11 minutes in 1753 and 2 hrs 10 minutes in 1769. This would have won gold until 1967 (yes, yes I know). The current record for the marathon in 2 hrs 4 minutes 55 seconds in 2003 (Paul Tergat of Kenya)
Also of interest, since 1912
- the pole vault has increased by 53% (where technical improvements are a major influence), as less technological dependent sports have these figures
- 23% for high jump, and
- 18% for long jump.
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