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!"

Comments

Correct name of the company...

[lemon031]

is PricewaterhouseCoopers, not PricewaterhouseCooper (as the blurb states).

Re:Iraqi Soccer

[rho]

No, not persecuted. They're called, in equal proportions, baby-killers, gay-bashers, eager-polluters, chickenhawks, war-mongers, racists, and Swiftian-like in their anti-poor attitudes.

Persecution? No, not persecuted. They're not put in cages, like gorillas, or denied ballot access. Baseless name-calling, borderline libel and slander, and various other ad hominem attacks abound, though. I'm not all that offended if some people classify that as "persecution", however--we are quite spoiled in America these days, due no doubt to the extreme unfairness inherent to our religio-capitalistic oppressive culture. When the biggest threats to your free speech involve the possible inability to access goatse.cx from the public library, it's possible that some people might exaggerate the nuances.

So, tell me. Do you think that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are being persecuted? After all, they've gotten close to zero media time on their well-documented charges, and have instead been accused of being Republican apparachniks by everybody from Dan Rather on down. Contrast this to the Bush-AWOL story that had legs for two weeks, which was based on the careful accretion of no facts at all. A serious charge has been made against Kerry--where are the defenders of the truth? They're poking into the Internet postings of the authors of a book and ignoring the charge altogether.

Re:Olympics

[proj_2501]

not all athletes are or were jocks.
not all geeks were picked on in high school.
not all geeks have to resort to ridiculous generalizations to make a post on slashdot.

grow up.