Tuesday, February 18, 2014

More Sochi Olympics

I noted that the Netherlands has outperformed the US by a huge margin at the
winter Olympics.  Most people went ballistic on me, and had all kinds of
reasons I was wrong.  ("Making Greg Wrong" should be an Olympic sport, maybe
!  It certainly is fun for most people ! )

So, this got me to doing a little more analysis.


----------------------------------------


So, I tried to get some better statistics.  In order to even out some of the
random effects like winter/summer bias, or luck.

Netherlands Winter
2014     20  (so far)
2010      8
2006      9
2002      8
1998     11
1994      4
Netherlands Summer
2012    20
2008    16
2004    22
2000     25
1996    19
1992    15

US Winter
2014      20  (so far)
2010      37
2006      25
2002      34
1998      13
1992      13
US Summer
2012     104
2008     110
2004     101
2000       93
1996     101
1992     108

Now the ratio of total Netherlands medals (summer + winter) year by year /
total of US medals (summer + winter) year by year

.333, .163, .246, .259, .263, .157 = 1.421
The average ratio is .236 or about 1 to 4.5

Doing the same for only winter

The average ratio is .494 or about 1 to 2

Doing the same for summer

The average ratio is .192 or about 1 to 5


Meanwhile, the population ratio of the Netherlands to the US is 1 to 18.9

The GDP ratio is 1 to 20

The land area ratio is 1 to 237


So, for total summer + winter medals, over the last six cycles, the
Netherlands has gotten medals at a ratio of about 1 to 4.5 compared to the
US.

For winter, the ratio is about 1 to 2

For summer, the ratio is about 1 to 5


So, I think we can actually consider that it is true, "winter" IS a "better"
place for the Netherlands sports than "summer," compared with the US.

And, we can consider that, although the US has 18.9 times the population of
the Netherlands, and 20 times the GDP, and 237 times the land area, the
ratio of medals between the two countries isn't anywhere close to that.  It
varies between 2 times the winter medals, 5 times the summer medals, and 4.5
times the total medals, winter + summer.

So, I think it's valid to conclude that, by any normal measure, the
Netherlands is performing at about 10 times the rate of the US in winter
games (based on winter medals, the ratio is 1 to 2, but based on population
or GDP, one would expect it would be about 1 to 20; 1 to 2 vs 1 to 20 is
about 10 times the rate expected from population or GDP), 4 times the rate
of the US in summer and total games.  This is a stellar performance, in
either season.

I attribute this huge difference to better management of their society.  It
certainly isn't money, because the GDP of the US is 20 times the
Netherlands' GDP, so if we wanted to apply our superior money, we could
clobber them.  And it isn't per capita income, because these are about the
same.  And it isn't larger population, because with a population 18.9 times
that of the Netherlands, we should be able to "pick" from a much bigger
pool, and the results show that we don't do that very well either.

So the huge difference in performance probably is due to superior
management.  Or maybe its the lack of junk food.

No comments:

Post a Comment