ryan.van.laar.online

Aug

2008 Olympic Medal Count: Updated (by someone else)

By Ryan 1 Comment

Categories: Nerd stuff

My totally fair and unbiased population-adjusted medal count has been causing quite the stir. I’ve let a few of the comments go live, but a few were - well, lets just say not in the spirit of the games.

Some a lot smarter and faster than myself, has beat me to doing a GDP/population based analysis, which you can see here.

I think the most informative calculation is the medal-type-adjusted (ie. silver = 1/2 gold), GDP and population adjusted ranking, which today has North Korea in the lead. This makes sense as all medals aren’t created equal, and there is a huge range of GDPs, not necessarily correlating with population.

I’ve created another graph of this data, which you can click on below to enlarge.

Australia seems to have dropped somewhat in the ranking using this scale. But we’re still way ahead of New Zealand and The Netherlands.

[Source: http://www.billmitchell.org/sport/medal_tally_2008]

Aug

BWE: My Fave Podcast of ‘08

By Ryan 0 Comments

Categories: Childish crap

For a few moths now I’ve been watching Best Night Ever/Best Week Ever, the uber-low-budget pop-culture podcast from MTV. The presenters are nobodies (to me anyway) but are so LOL funny. After a few recent embarrassing laugh/snort outbursts on public transport, I now only watch it in the privacy of my own apartment or office-cubicle, and half the time I don’t even know the show, event or celebrity in question.

Best Night Ever: 8-14-08 @ Yahoo! Video

This was one of of last weeks episodes that I found rather hilarious. I’ve always wanted my own backup dancers, but now I’m beginning to see the need for my own personal backup singer.

You can subscribe to it via iTunes, I can’t be bothered putting a link here (only on my 2nd coffee of the day).

Aug

On the (Coney Island) Boardwalk…

By Ryan 0 Comments

Categories: Friends and NYC

Taking advantage of a nice weekend in what’s left of summer, we (David, Rick, James, Matt, et moi) went to Coney Island this weekend; lured by the promise of hot dogs and shirtless-people-watching.

It’s about an hour from Manhattan/civilisation on the subway and has a St.Kilda feel to it (for my australian readers). The Coney Is subway stop has a uber European feel to it, thankfully I managed to suppress the flashbacks.

The island/park is being shut down this year, which I’m sure is a big issue for those in the know. I’m glad I got to see it, cruise the boardwalk, eat a disgusting hotdog with onions and cheese that was squirted out of a nosle, and most importantly go on what must be the most dangerous and violent roller-coaster of all time.

I found this video below, I was too busy screaming like a girl, crapping myself and developing severe whiplash to take my own. It was the best $8 I’ve ever spent!

Because the whole site is run down and tacky, it makes for some amazing photo opportunities. I present to you the ones that are fit to blog:

Aug

Australia Kicking Olympic Ass: The Population-Adjusted Medal Count

By Ryan 4 Comments

Categories: Uncategorized

Not that I even really care, but the overall medal count strikes me as somewhat mis-representative of the true situation. Each country only has a limited population to draw upon for their team, shouldn’t this be considered?

Here’s the count, as of today: (I stopped at the NL, because I figured if they have more medals than you, you may as well just go home)

2008 Olympic Medal count sorted by total number of medals:

	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total	Rank by medal count
United States	14	12	18	44	1
China	25	9	6	40	2
Australia	5	7	8	20	3
Russia	3	8	8	19	4
France	3	8	7	18	5
South Korea	6	8	3	17	6
Italy	6	4	4	14	7
Germany	8	2	4	14	8
Japan	6	4	3	13	9
Cuba	1	3	4	8	10
Great Britain	3	2	3	8	11
Ukraine	3	0	4	7	12
Netherlands	1	2	4	7	13

And here’s how I think it should be:

2008 Olympic Medal count sorted by total number of medals / population:

	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total	Rank by medal count	Population	(Medal count / population) * 10 million
Cuba	1	3	4	8	10	#N/A	#N/A
Ukraine	3	0	4	7	12	#N/A	#N/A
Australia	5	7	8	20	3	21388597	9.3508
Netherlands	1	2	4	7	13	16444382	4.2568
South Korea	6	8	3	17	6	48224000	3.5252
France	3	8	7	18	5	64473140	2.7919
Italy	6	4	4	14	7	59619290	2.3482
Germany	8	2	4	14	8	82217800	1.7028
United States	14	12	18	44	1	304866000	1.4433
Russia	3	8	8	19	4	141888900	1.3391
Great Britain	3	2	3	8	11	60587300	1.3204
Japan	6	4	3	13	9	127690000	1.0181
China	25	9	6	40	2	1325525000	0.3018

…sorry Cuba and Ukrane, I couldn’t find your info.

Just in case the message here wasn’t clear, here’s a handy Gcal chart. I scaled the values by 10 million to make the numbers more aesthetically pleasing:

See how much more accurate this looks…?

Somehow, inexplicably, the Netherlands are coming second by this tally, which is so very wrong. I’m going to have to check/manipulate my calculations. Maybe the events for cheese-rolling, joint-smoking and red-light-districting have were all in the first few days.

I’m also working on factoring in a GDP component to the formula, but so far I’m not agreeing with how that looks.

Regardless, I think it’s abundantly clear that my home country is far and away the (presumptive) overall winner. I’m so inspired, I’m going to wear my new Australian flag beach towel (thanks mum) as a Cathy-Freeman-style cape this weekend.

Aug