Tuesday, February 25, 2014

2014 Winter Olympics: Which Countries Performed the Best?

Here is an excerpt from my article on the 2014 Sochi Olympics.  Note that I reference two links / articles that may be of interest:

The article looks at overall medal performance -- as well as performance as a function of population and GDP.  



The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics ended on February 23. History has been written, new records have been achieved and medals have been awarded. There have been many story lines such as Russian skating sensation Yulia Lipnitskaya becoming the youngest Olympic gold medalist in team figure skating at age 15. The Olympics are a special time as the world cheers for athletic excellence and countries seem to pull together to root for their country’s athletes.

As Olympic fans note, there are several lists of medal counts. Some people like to follow the gold medal count while others focus on total medals. Based on an informal survey, we created a point value system for medals as follows: five points for a gold medal, two points for silver, and one point for bronze.
Based on this point system, we awarded the following medals for overall country performance:

Gold – Russia
Silver – Norway
Bronze — Canada
Special mention: USA (fourth place)






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