974 medals up for grabs. About 1 in 6 humans live in India. Yet the country comes home with just 1 silver. And let's not forget the 1 bronze; or the many 4th place finishers who are "also winners" or the >150 medals earned in the Special Olympics instead (at this point every bit of credit helps.) Those athletes return home to a rousing parade, celebrating hero-like status for their international achievement in sports. British journalist Piers Morgan along with others rejoin with brazenfaced tweets that this is all a colossal "embarrassment", and discharge an ensuing a firestorm. How does statistics show who's right? Cutting straight to the main argument, principal decomposition of a number of eigen factors reveals that a nation's GDP is far more relevant in understanding the overall medal performance, and not necessarily population. To begin, see this map below showing the distribution of 974 medals if proportional by GDP. We see in green color those nations awarded more medals than predicted by their GDP, and in red color those nations such as India who were awarded less. Note that in this analysis we could have analyzed a score that weighs gold higher than the other "loser metals" (something India is ultra familiar with given it's affection for gold during seasonal celebrations), however we gave the country all analytical benefits by tabulating all medals under the same count.
Now let's also explore the influence of population, with the shown data below sized by population. We confirm more directly that about the world that the total medal count in fact rises along with a nation's GDP... except when it comes to India. India not only breaks from that trend, but its medal count is far weaker than most territories in its lower quartile of GDP/population (shown on the upper left quadrant). One would expect that a country of such behemoth population to match their aspirations, would better align their performance to that of other countries about the globe. Instead they have been making a whole cast of misfit nations suddenly appear highly exceptional. From China (70), to Hungary (15), to Bulgaria (3), to modest countries that excel far more and having far less to work with: Kenya (13) and Ethiopia (8). For India to force itself back into the global fold here, we have to realize at least a 5x improvement in Olympic medals. Something that won't happen overnight; but then again it won't happen at all if India just gleefully pats itself on the back for winning 2 medals.
Now let's also explore the influence of population, with the shown data below sized by population. We confirm more directly that about the world that the total medal count in fact rises along with a nation's GDP... except when it comes to India. India not only breaks from that trend, but its medal count is far weaker than most territories in its lower quartile of GDP/population (shown on the upper left quadrant). One would expect that a country of such behemoth population to match their aspirations, would better align their performance to that of other countries about the globe. Instead they have been making a whole cast of misfit nations suddenly appear highly exceptional. From China (70), to Hungary (15), to Bulgaria (3), to modest countries that excel far more and having far less to work with: Kenya (13) and Ethiopia (8). For India to force itself back into the global fold here, we have to realize at least a 5x improvement in Olympic medals. Something that won't happen overnight; but then again it won't happen at all if India just gleefully pats itself on the back for winning 2 medals.
No comments:
Post a Comment