2010 Oct 15 category: World Affairs author: mapster
The 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi have now ended and congratulations are due to India not only for hosting a successful event but also for their fine performance at the Games, which saw them place second in the official medals table, where gold medals outrank any number of silvers or bronzes.
In addition to enjoying the Games we’ve remained captivated by the competitive dynamic of our GDP Adjusted Medals Ranking. The aim was to create a performance ranking that represented a more equitable relative comparison between participants regardless of their human or financial resources. In this we reckon to have been largely successful as both small and large nations have had a degree of success in our ranking. Tiny Nauru won after winning one gold and one silver, which truly is an exceptional achievement for such a small nation. In a similar way Samoa placed second by winning three golds and a bronze. By any measure Australia continues to excel in multi-sports competitions and even after a large 3.16 ‘GDP Factor’ adjustment they still secured third place in our ranking. They were, however, nearly caught by Kenya, who ended fourth after some exceptional track performances. Following Kenya in our ranking there wasn’t much to choose between England, India and New Zealand, who finished in that order.
We congratulate all the participants in these Games and look forward to applying this methodolgy to future multinational sports events such as the Olympics.
2010 Oct 11 category: World Affairs author: mapster
8 days of the 11 day 2010 Commonwealth Games have been completed and our GDP Adjusted Medals Ranking is providing a very credible picture of the relative performances of the nations. It has also yielded some very close contests for position that are only likely to be resolved on the final day of competition.
Two very small nations, Nauru and Samoa, sit in the top two positions and are not likely to be overtaken. This is not surprising as we would expect small nation performance to be quite variable from one Games to the next and at any given Games one or two of the small nations are likely to achieve exceptional results, when adjusted for GDP.
Australia still look solid in third place but could be overtaken by Kenya whose strong track results have seen them rise to fourth place. Our first neck and neck contest comes at positions 5 and 6 between India and England. India have the edge but by the narrowest of margins – just one ranking point. India have performed well at these Games while England might be a little disappointed that golds make up less than 25% of their 111 medal haul. Lower down we have Nigeria, Jamaica, New Zealand and Canada all within 5 points of each other. Which of these 4 capable nations will have final bragging rights? There is still a lot to play for so check back to see how this ranking will shift as the final days of competition are completed.
2010 Oct 08 category: World Affairs author: mapster
On Day 4 of the 2010 Commonwealth Games, Peter Yukio, of the tiny island nation of Nauru, gave that nation an unbeatable lead in our GDP Adjusted Medals Ranking with his gold medal win in the 77kg men’s weightlifting competition. In fact Nauru’s lead was originally so unassailable that it caused us to rethink the way we adjust medals value by GDP in our ranking. In the revised ranking Nauru is still firmly and probably unbeatably in the lead but they wouldn’t be had that medal been bronze. We’re comfortable with the revised ranking because Nauru is such small nation that even a single gold for them is a remarkable achievement.
In fact it had already become apparent that simply dividing a nation’s medals value by their GDP was giving too much advantage to very small nations in our ranking. The dynamic can be rationalized as follows. Assuming for the moment that GDP per head is the same for all nations then we would not necessarily expect that 10 times the population would result in 10 times the medal haul in a competition like this. Typically a nation can only enter 3 athletes for any event and this is likely to limit the number of people from any given nation who strive to compete at this level no matter how large that nation is. So dividing medals value by anything proportional to population (or GDP) would likely handicap larger nations too much.
The challenge then was to find an alternative adjustment that had a less dramatic effect than merely dividing by GDP. In the end we settled for dividing by a ‘GDP factor’ that is proportional to the square root of GDP. The main justification for this is that it is still relatively straightforward and it also yields a pleasingly competitive ranking based on results so far. It is also defensible on the basis that population/GDP does confer an advantage but in a way that tends to diminish as these factors increase. Anyway, you can judge the revised GDP Adjusted Medals Ranking for yourselves and let us know what you think. We see some very close competition between nations that would otherwise rank far apart in a traditional medals table and that fulfills our orginal objective in establishing the GDP adjusted ranking.
2010 Oct 07 category: World Affairs author: mapster
How much impact can an individual athlete have at a multi-national sports competition? The answer is considerable if you follow our 2010 Commonwealth Games GDP Adjusted Medals Ranking. After factoring in late results from day 3 of the event, the top spot in our ranking was seized by Uganda and it was all down to Moses Ndiema Kipsiro who won the men’s 5000m event.
The GDP adjustment in our ranking attempts to create a more equitable comparison between all the competing nations. One consequence of this is that individual athletes from smaller nations can have a much greater impact. Nevertheless we feel that in the case of Moses Kipsiro such recognition is fully deserved. The guy was leading at the bell (after 4,600m) and still held off three strong Kenyans at a sprint for the entire final 400m – awesome. So Moses Kipsiro deserves special congratulations and of course all the athletes competing at these games deserve our support and admiration.
2010 Oct 06 category: World Affairs author: mapster
A quarter of the world’s population potentially has an interest in the 2010 Commonwealth Games currently being held in Delhi. 71 ‘nations’ (including sub-nations) are being represented in this multi-national sporting competition, which occurs every four years. These nations range from the immense, India with a population of 1.18 million, to the tiny, Tuvalu with a population of just 12,000. The larger and the more affluent nations will be expected to win most of the medals but we wondered if it would be possible to compare the performance of such disparate nations on anything like an equitable basis.
After some thought and experimentation we have settled on a ranking based on a ‘Medals Value’ which is divided by the GDP of the nation. Our Medals Value deems each medal to be worth slightly more than twice that of the one below it (12pts for a gold, 5pts for a silver and 2pts for a bronze) while the GDP adjustment takes account of both the population and affluence of a nation. The resulting GDP Adjusted Medals Ranking for the 2010 Commonwealth Games will be updated at the end of each day of competition.
We like to think this ranking methodology gives any nation the chance to finish top. In fact we think it might actually favor smaller nations if by chance they happen to be fielding a few exception athletes this year. Indeed, this could be the Isle of Man’s year if Mark Cavendish wins a cycling gold. No matter which nation you are rooting for, have a little fun by tracking their position in our GDP Adjusted Medals Ranking.