Alana Is Reading

Okay, so in the Olympics, the “official” gold medal rankings look like this:

1. USA
2. China
3. Russia
4. UK
5. Germany
6. Japan
7. Australia
8. France
9. South Korea
10. Italy

But here’s my problem with that list: Is it really fair to compare China or the US with the UK?  China literally has a billion people that they can sift through to find the best.  The US has over 300 million.  The UK only has just over 62 million people. I mean, that’s like trying to pick all of your American Olympians just from California and Texas.  And even the UK has a fairly high number of people to draw from.

So here are the medal winners, adjusted for the populations of each country.  Kind of the “medals per capita” rankings.  

1. Grenada (pop. 105,000; 1 medal)
2. Jamaica (pop. 2,705,827; 12 medals)
3. Trinidad and Tobago (pop. 1,317,714; 4 medals)
4. New Zealand (pop. 4,434,430; 13 medals)
5. Bahamas (pop. 353,658; 1 medal)
6. Slovenia (pop. 2,057,920; 4 medals)
7. Mongolia (pop. 2,844,000; 5 medals)
8. Hungary (pop. 9,962,000; 17 medals)
9. Denmark (pop. 5,584,758; 9 medals)
10. Lithuania (pop. 3,187,700; 5 medals)

These countries really have something to be proud of.  On my list, The US is number 47, China is number 71, and the UK is 24.

Those top ten countries from the first list?  Here’s the order they shift into per capita:

1. Australia
2. UK
3. South Korea
4. Russia
5. Germany
6. France
7. Italy
8. USA
9. Japan
10. China

1. bundleofrhetoric reblogged this from alanaisreading
2. alanaisreading posted this