The Olympics: A Slightly Different View

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Rod has been thinking about the recent Olympics.

A Slightly Different View

The Olympic torch.


Cynical about The Olympics? Yeah me too, though I must admit it had great attraction and spellbinding moments (more, probably, if I'd watched more).


Perusing the medal tables gave pause – how many of us are world-class? (in anything, really – but sport's been the thing of the moment).



One-in-a-million?



Well, in some places maybe.


Olympically, the top ten countries (all medals) were:

CountryTotal Medals Population
USA 104 314M
China 88 1,350M
Russia 82 143M
Britain 65 62M
Germany 44 82M
Japan 38 128M
Australia 35 23M
France 34 65M
South Korea 28 50M
Italy 28 61M



Now, if we look at those medals and those populations and rearrange the list according to population per medal...


{the figures are approximate, of course, so don't complain}



CountryPopulationMedalsPeople/Medal
Australia 23M 35 650,000
Britain 62M 65 1,000,000
Russia 143M 82 1,700,000
Germany 82M 44 1,800,000
South Korea 50M 28 1,800,000
France 65M 34 1,900,000
Italy 61M 28 2,000,000
USA 314M 104 3,000,000
Japan 128M 38 3,400,000
China 1,350M 88 15,000,000



Looks a bit different, eh? – but that's looking at only the "Top Ten" in the medals table. Doing more calculations would change that leaderboard, wouldn't it?



What do you think?











{whisper} and there's another country you've heard of now and then...

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