No nation officially wins the Olympics, but that doesn’t stop journalists and others from trying to keep score by counting gold, silver and bronze medals.
The raw medal count overly favors populous nations, while ranking nations by medals per capita overly favors small nations that win one, two or a few medals, possibly by fluke.
The problem, as I said, is that it’s not reliable when it comes to the performance of very small nations.
For example, rural counties dominate the list of counties with the highest kidney cancer rates, which seems like a good reason to rush funding to rural health authorities.
But guess what — rural counties also dominate the list of counties with the lowest kidney cancer rates.
Persons:
Pete Pfitzinger
Organizations:
Tokyo Games
Locations:
San Marino, Bermuda, Grenada