Who's the best?
Which countries have the most naturally athletic populations?
Problem
Who's the Best? printable sheet
Who's the Best? medal table CSV file
Which countries are most "sporty"?
Below, we have provided the London 2012 Olympics medal table.
Do you think the medals table alone offers enough information to answer this question fairly?
What other information do you think could be taken into account?
Make a plan of the information you will collect and the calculations you will perform. Then carry out your plan to decide which countries are most sporty.
Send us your top-rated countries, together with your justification for the data and criteria you chose to include in your analysis.
In the London 2012 Olympics the final medal table was as follows (spreadsheet CSV form)
| Country | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 46 | 28 | 29 | 103 |
| China | 38 | 28 | 22 | 88 |
| Great Britain | 29 | 17 | 19 | 65 |
| Russia | 24 | 25 | 32 | 81 |
| South Korea | 13 | 8 | 7 | 28 |
| Germany | 11 | 19 | 14 | 44 |
| France | 11 | 11 | 12 | 34 |
| Italy | 8 | 9 | 11 | 28 |
| Hungary | 8 | 4 | 6 | 18 |
| Australia | 7 | 16 | 12 | 35 |
| Japan | 7 | 14 | 17 | 38 |
| Kazakhstan | 7 | 1 | 5 | 13 |
| Netherlands | 6 | 6 | 8 | 20 |
| Ukraine | 6 | 5 | 9 | 20 |
| New Zealand | 6 | 2 | 5 | 13 |
| Cuba | 5 | 3 | 7 | 15 |
| Iran | 4 | 5 | 3 | 12 |
| Jamaica | 4 | 4 | 4 | 12 |
| Czech Republic | 4 | 3 | 3 | 10 |
| North Korea | 4 | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| Spain | 3 | 10 | 4 | 17 |
| Brazil | 3 | 5 | 9 | 17 |
| South Africa | 3 | 2 | 1 | 6 |
| Ethiopia | 3 | 1 | 3 | 7 |
| Croatia | 3 | 1 | 2 | 6 |
| Belarus | 2 | 5 | 5 | 12 |
| Romania | 2 | 5 | 2 | 9 |
| Kenya | 2 | 4 | 5 | 11 |
| Denmark | 2 | 4 | 3 | 9 |
| Azerbaijan | 2 | 2 | 6 | 10 |
| Poland | 2 | 2 | 6 | 10 |
| Turkey | 2 | 2 | 1 | 5 |
| Switzerland | 2 | 2 | 0 | 4 |
| Lithuania | 2 | 1 | 2 | 5 |
| Norway | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Canada | 1 | 5 | 12 | 18 |
| Sweden | 1 | 4 | 3 | 8 |
| Colombia | 1 | 3 | 4 | 8 |
| Georgia | 1 | 3 | 3 | 7 |
| Mexico | 1 | 3 | 3 | 7 |
| Ireland | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| Argentina | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| Serbia | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| Slovenia | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| Tunisia | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Dominican Republic | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | 1 | 0 | 3 | 4 |
| Uzbekistan | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| Latvia | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Algeria | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Bahamas | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Grenada | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Uganda | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Venezuela | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| India | 0 | 2 | 4 | 6 |
| Mongolia | 0 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| Thailand | 0 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| Egypt | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Slovakia | 0 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| Armenia | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Belgium | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Finland | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Bulgaria | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Estonia | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Indonesia | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Malaysia | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Puerto Rico | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Chinese Taipei | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Botswana | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Cyprus | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Gabon | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Guatemala | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Montenegro | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Portugal | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Greece | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Moldova | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Qatar | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Singapore | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Afghanistan | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Bahrain | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Hong Kong | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Saudi Arabia | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Kuwait | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Morocco | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Tajikistan | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Notes and Background
The Plus article Harder, better, faster, stronger explores some of the same ideas as this problem.
Getting Started
How might the population size of a nation affect its chances of winning a medal?
What about the wealth of a nation?
Student Solutions
In this problem, we needed to find a way to use the Olympic medal tally in order to work out which country is the most sporty.
Gianluca from Salesian School in Chertsey sent us his excellent analysis of the Olympic tally. He made use of a scoring system for each type of medal and also took into account the population of each country. You can find his analysis here, thank you Gianluca!
Teachers' Resources
Why do this problem?
This problem offers an engaging context for planning and carrying out a data-handling activity. Many problems that students meet are "tidy"; this activity prepares students for the messy nature of real-world data-handling. Students will need to make decisions about the data they need, and to search for that data.
Possible approach
Show the medal table from the 2012 Olympics.
When groups present their findings, encourage the other groups to offer constructive feedback on the decisions they chose to make, the evidence they chose to include in their analysis, and the parts of the presentation they found most convincing. One way to do this is for each group to make a short presentation with time for comments and questions afterwards. Alternatively, groups could prepare a poster presentation and then time could be allowed for everyone to go round and look at each poster, writing feedback on post-it notes.
Key questions
Does the Olympic table rank countries fairly?
Possible support
Some simple and quantifiable criteria that students could use in their analysis could be population size and wealth of the nation. It may be worth finding out some of this data in advance in order to guide the students' searches.
Possible extension
Students could use data from previous Olympics to see the extent to which their criteria give a constant list of most sporty nations over time.