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.