I Am Overthinking the Olympics (Day 9)

Here's the problem:

London 2012 ‏@London2012 

Could it be a clean sweep for China in #Badminton? By the end of today they may have all 5 gold medals up for grabs http://l2012.cm/N6NBoE  

3:45 AM - 5 Aug 12

This is not an Olympics problem; it's a reporting-on-the-Olympics problem.

Everybody dutifully reports the medals table, and I'm glad that they at least do that because I think it's a lot of fun to keep up with. But to present aggregate Olympics success based on the medals table alone, when the closing medals table will reflect five times more medals for badminton than it does for basketball, is lazy.

London2012.com divides the games into 24 sports.

Now, I have issue with this cutup of the data, too, because of the cycling and gymnastics granularity. But the London2012.com breakout is a credible starting point for the conversation.

What I propose is assigning 100 points per sport, with points per medal based on a formula that favors gold medals over silver and silver over bronze. And I would calibrate it so that the favoring is very heavy, perhaps ... 

10G+5S+B=100

So then each sport awards however many medals it wants within its discipline, and then we medals-table people feed those numbers into the formula; solve for G, S and B, and then add up points per national team.

Anticipating a couple of criticisms ...

First, this is not (only) a complicated scheme to mitigate China's trampoline success. I'm uncertain that it would actually favor the United States, for example.

Second, I'm not saying that it should replace medals count, Olympic Efficiency Score (OES), Extended Olympic Efficiency Score (EOES) or any of the other metrics that have undergirded Olympics reporting for years. And, as to the raw medals table specifically, I do want to say that I think it's a meaningful indicator of how many different times a nation got to cheer and cry because one of fellow citizens earned an Olympic medal, which is a huge, huge accomplishment--gold, silver or bronze.

But for those of us who want to use the Olympics to gauge which country is best at sports--which is not the point of the Olympics (and that's why this is not an Olympics problem) but which many people, oftentimes including myself, try to do (and that's why this is a reporting-on-the-Olympics problem)--we have to go a little further than the medals table. "Event-Balanced Olympic Points" ("E-BOP") would be another way to peek into that question.

Previous reports:

-- watching Day i (July 25)

-- watching Day ii (July 26)

-- watching opening day and the opening ceremony (July 27)

-- watching Day 1 and the men's cycling road race (July 28)

-- watching Day 2, the women's road race, and Team USA's performance relative to the U.S. percentage of world GDP and an introduction to "Olympic Efficiency Scores (OES)" (July 29)

-- watching Day 3, an introduction to "Extended Olympic Efficiency Scores (EOES)," a tip of the hat to Team USA swimming, an arch of an eyebrow toward Team China swimming, a women's basketball update, end-of-day OES and end-of-day EOES (July 30)

-- watching Day 4, a men's basketball update, badminton jive, "culture war" jive, end-of-day OES and end-of-day EOES (July 31)

-- watching Day 5, mixed feelings about U.S. success, the cycling time trials, a women's basketball update, end-of-day OES and end-of-day EOES (Aug. 1)

-- watching Day 6, men's basketball update, end-of-day OES and end-of-day EOES (Aug. 2)

-- watching Day 7, end-of-day OES and end-of-day EOES (Aug. 3)

-- watching Day 8, women's basketball update, special report of Louisvillian Dotsie Bausch's medal, end-of-day OES and end-of-day EOES (Aug. 4)