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Medal Count Calculations


Now that the Olympics are over its time to break down the medal counts and take a view at just which nation the US or China had a more impressive showing. We shall take away all controversy (ie using underage girls) and take away whether or not an event one is a leisure game or any actual sport ie Badminton and simply play with the numbers.

Here is fact #1 the US won 10 more overall medals in Olympic events while the Chinese won 15 more gold medals. Putting together my own simple mathematical equation where a country is awarded 3 'points' for a gold, 2 'points' for a silver and 1 'point' for a bronze China wins by a total of 3 points as seen below. So by that generic equation I would typically say that the Chinese had a better Olympics than the US.


Golds Silver Bronze Total Math
China 51 21 28 100 223
USA 36 38 36 110 220

But now let us take a different view on things and think of how many medals a nation actually took home and not how many events a nation won. When the basketball team wins a gold medal twelve different athletes come home with a gold medal, not just one. So what would the totals look like when you take the list of American Athletes with medals compared to the Chinese athletes with medals? The answer, is a lot different. Of the large team sports China won medals in only women's field hockey (silver) and women's volleyball (bronze). Meanwhile the US won bronze in baseball, silver in softball, women's volleyball men's and women's water polo and gold in women's soccer, men's volleyball, men's and women's basketball. Thus we took home a lot more medals than did the Chinese, 51 to be exact.


Golds Silver Bronze Total Math
USA 125 109 81 315 674
China 74 55 56 185 388


So I dub it America wins.

Comments

Anonymous said…
pretty sure you mislabeled that last chart...
Simon said…
Good call
Red Baron said…
China went out of their way to concentrate on sports where individuals get medals, and on sports where one individual could get more than one medal. Diving, table tennis, gymnastics, etc. Since they basically determine what sports their youth will play in, that gives them a pretty serious advantage.
Anonymous said…
lol this article fails, GO BACK TO FOX NEWS and find more "America is great zomg im sean hannity" clips and report back to me.

China beat us, they trained harder, they worked harder and they wanted to win more then we did. This is what the Olympics are about and they earned it. Stop making excuses on how much we failed this olympics.
Simon said…
You sound suspiciously Canadian...
Anonymous said…
Stop making excuses on how much U.S. failed this olympics!
Anonymous said…
It’s stupid to rank by the total medals, is bronze worth the same as gold????????

It’s ridiculous to count each team member’s gold, hey, IOC still considers basketball gold as ONE gold!!!!!!
Anonymous said…
ridiculous. Red baron was right. please quit making excuses. The US got dominated by China this Olympics. They had a poor showing and China had a dominant one. thats all there is to it. You can mix and match sports and come up with all the BS you want to make it seem like the US was #1 but at the end of the day the US still lost the OFFICIAL RANKINGS(the ones that the rest of the world goes by). Of course, America couldnt go by these rankings because if they did it would put them in *gasp!*....second place. Anyway, your first set of calculations is flawed. There is no way that a gold medal(3 points) is equal to a silver(2) and bronze(1). I would take a Gold over 3 silvers as would most people that are right in the head.
Anonymous said…
ridiculous. Red baron was right. please quit making excuses. The US got dominated by China this Olympics. They had a poor showing and China had a dominant one. thats all there is to it. You can mix and match sports and come up with all the BS you want to make it seem like the US was #1 but at the end of the day the US still lost the OFFICIAL RANKINGS(the ones that the rest of the world goes by). Of course, America couldnt go by these rankings because if they did it would put them in *gasp!*....second place. Anyway, your first set of calculations is flawed. There is no way that a gold medal(3 points) is equal to a silver(2) and bronze(1). I would take a Gold over 3 silvers as would most people that are right in the head.

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