Armenia leads Olympic Medal Count

UPDATE 28 AUG 08: NEW POST WITH UPDATED FINAL STANDINGS

The Wall Street Journal today noted a controversy over the Olympic medal count, whether to rank countries by their total medal count (the US convention) or by the number of gold medals. The Beijing Olympic page ranks countries by the count of gold medals, which places China in first with 17 golds and the US in second with 10 golds, even though the US has won 29 medals overall, compared to China's 27.

The controversy is more stark further down the list. For example, Zimbabwe with 3 silvers is ranked behind Thailand with one gold, and Ukraine with 4 bronzes is behind Vietnam with one silver.

As the WSJ notes, the danger of ranking by gold medals instead of total medals is that some countries (Australia, Japan, France, Germany) are already cutting funding for sports that don't have a shot at being number one.

Usually no statistical method gives a complete picture, and the medal count is no exception. Let's take a look here at how the medal count would look if we weighted the medals counts different ways, for example, by the country's population or per capita GDP. (This is using population and GDP purchasing power parity data from the CIA Factbook, and the medal count as of this morning 13 August 2008 around 10am EST).

As you can see on the below tables, the US drops to a still respectable 9th place when measuring total medals to per capita GDP. China, still a developing country, stays in second place, and Georgia closely trails Russia.

When measuring medals to total population, Armenia is the winner with 3 medals for a population of less than 3 million. Neither the US, China, or Russia makes the top ten of that ranking. If the US won as many medals as Armenia per population, then the US would have over 300 medals.

The point is that there are multiple legitimate ways to measure medal success, and we would do well to remember that the goal of the Olympic movement is "to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practised without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play." Of course it's far easier to just count medals.

Ranked by Total Medals to Per Capita GDP
Rank	Country	Gold	Total	GDP per capita
1	Zimbabwe	0	3	$179
2	China	17	27	$5,256
3	North Korea	1	7	$1,704
4	Togo	0	1	$889
5	Kyrgyztan	0	2	$1,960
6	Russia	2	12	$14,840
7	Georgia	2	3	$4,427
8	Cuba	0	3	$4,474
9	US	10	29	$45,553
10	Tajikistan	0	1	$1,639
Ranked by Total Medals to Population
Rank	Country	Gold	Total	Population
1	Armenia	0	3	2,968,586
2	Georgia	2	3	4,630,841
3	Australia	4	12	20,600,856
4	Switzerland	1	4	7,581,520
5	Slovenia	0	1	2,007,711
6	Finland	1	2	5,244,749
7	Kyrgyztan	0	2	5,356,869
8	Azerbaijan	1	3	8,177,717
9	Slovakia	1	2	5,455,407
10	Mongolia	0	1	2,996,081