Re:Great visualization of olympic medals won by year
by tlrobinson on Tuesday August 05, 2008 @03:58PM
(#267807)
This is a great visualization, I learned a lot about the history of the Olympics just from playing with it for a few minutes.
The first Olympics were held in Greece in 1896. During the first few games the hosting country seemed to have a huge home court advantage, but it stabilized over time.
The 1980 games in Moscow were boycotted by the US and others. The 1984 games in Los Angeles were boycotted by the Soviet Union and others.
In '88 it was called the Soviet Union, in '92 it was the Former Soviet Union, and in '96 it was Russia, Ukraine, etc... I wonder what happened ;)
Re:Great visualization of olympic medals won by year
by Chocobean on Wednesday August 06, 2008 @03:48PM
(#268882)
if its not bad form to quote wikipedia, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_China where it mentions the fall of the Gang of Four. I think what happened was that China was pretty unstable what with the Wars and then the Communist takeover in 1950, and the Great Leap Forward (exercise in Irony) crippled the country until the economic reforms around the same time as 1984.
Re:Great visualization of olympic medals won by year
by gojomo on Wednesday August 06, 2008 @12:03PM
(#268597)
I knew about the boycotts and the USSR -- but not the large early domination of host country, Sweden's early strong showings, and that as late as 1964 the divided Germanies were still competing as one (which didn't return until 1992).
So a great infographic -- visually interesting and informative.
It would be great to see other statistics animated the same way -- GDP and per capita GDP would be especially interesting, given the last ~30 years of 1.5 billion people moving out of poverty and the rise of China and India.
Re:Great visualization of olympic medals won by year
by hugh on Tuesday August 05, 2008 @01:55PM
(#267676)
That is indeed a great visualisation of some not-very-interesting data.
The only interesting point is the way that the host countries dominated the medal rankings for the first few decades. At the St Louis Olympics practically all the medals were taken home by US-based athletes.
Of course, it is no credit whatsoever to a country to take home medals at the Olympic games. I'm from Australia, a country which punches far above its weight in the Olympic games, but that's only because we have a taxpayer-funded National Institute of Sport to train the athletes (and are, to my understanding, the only non-Communist country to have one).
Re:Great visualization of olympic medals won by year
by ChaitanyaSai on Tuesday August 05, 2008 @02:11PM
(#267694)
No, there is some interesting data. The geo-politics embedded in it show up really well. East, west germany reunifying, Soviet Union disintegrating, the 1980 Summer Olympics boycott by the Americans, the back-at-you boycott in 84 by the Soviets, and Brazil becoming a force (as their economy strengthened perhaps?).
Edit: Also, Japan's absence from the '48 edition after the second world war. Fun going from the map to Wikipedia to find out the reason for some major perturbations.
Re:Great visualization of olympic medals won by year
by markbao on Tuesday August 05, 2008 @04:46PM
(#267860)
It would be even more awesome if each circle had a sub-circle to represent gold medals. For example, it's not immediately clear, for instance in 2004 Athens, that US had 102 medals, 36 golds, but although China only had 63 medals it had 32 golds.
Still, very cool. Love seeing the number of medals against time as well.
Re:Great visualization of olympic medals won by year
by ardit33 on Wednesday August 06, 2008 @12:33AM
(#268224)
well, in many sports, the difference between a gold medalist, and silver one tend to be really minor. So, ability wise, a silver medalist is doing pretty well, and can consider to be a top athlete of the world in that given discipline.
So, maybe a 10 points for a gold, 8, for silver, and 6 for bronze might make more sense.
Formula One used to have this scoring mechanism (which I thought was fair), first 10, second place 8, third 6, then 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. Usually in a car race there are about 20-22 cars, so only the first 8 cars would get any points.
Re:Great visualization of olympic medals won by year
by riahi on Thursday August 07, 2008 @01:25PM
(#269799)
Very interesting visualization, but you can also see the politics of today. Certain countries are selectively emphasized even though their relative size does not deserve it. In particular, Iran is a labeled circle in 2000 and 2004 when they won maybe 6 medals total.
Re:Great visualization of olympic medals won by year
by fiaz on Wednesday August 06, 2008 @08:54AM
(#268407)
Fascinating! It reminds me of cell division shortly after fertilization. I wonder if there is a similar pattern when ideas spread throughout a given population.
The first Olympics were held in Greece in 1896. During the first few games the hosting country seemed to have a huge home court advantage, but it stabilized over time.
The 1980 games in Moscow were boycotted by the US and others. The 1984 games in Los Angeles were boycotted by the Soviet Union and others.
In '88 it was called the Soviet Union, in '92 it was the Former Soviet Union, and in '96 it was Russia, Ukraine, etc... I wonder what happened ;)
So a great infographic -- visually interesting and informative.
It would be great to see other statistics animated the same way -- GDP and per capita GDP would be especially interesting, given the last ~30 years of 1.5 billion people moving out of poverty and the rise of China and India.
This shows the GDP stats even better! Well worth watching
The only interesting point is the way that the host countries dominated the medal rankings for the first few decades. At the St Louis Olympics practically all the medals were taken home by US-based athletes.
Of course, it is no credit whatsoever to a country to take home medals at the Olympic games. I'm from Australia, a country which punches far above its weight in the Olympic games, but that's only because we have a taxpayer-funded National Institute of Sport to train the athletes (and are, to my understanding, the only non-Communist country to have one).
Is that why Cuba has so many medals starting in the 60s?
Still, very cool. Love seeing the number of medals against time as well.
Hypothetical example, Gold medal = 3pts, Silver = 2pts, Bronze = 1pt. Total the # of points and scale chart accordingly.
So, maybe a 10 points for a gold, 8, for silver, and 6 for bronze might make more sense.
Formula One used to have this scoring mechanism (which I thought was fair), first 10, second place 8, third 6, then 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. Usually in a car race there are about 20-22 cars, so only the first 8 cars would get any points.
Any history buffs want to fill me in? (sorry, working. Will make up for it after hours)