Re:Great visualization of olympic medals won by year
by jimbokun on Wednesday August 06, 2008 @02:18PM
(#268765)
And China seems to appear out of nowhere in 1984. Was that their first year participating?
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 whatusername on Wednesday August 06, 2008 @08:06PM
(#269186)
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_be...
This shows the GDP stats even better! Well worth watching
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 ;)