Oh fuck.
I nostalgia'd so damn bad. haha.

Is it bad that I can guess what that YouTube link goes to just from Exilement and Jutsu's comments?

Quote from Exilement

Great Britain is, what, a little over half the size of California?

We're roughly twice the size of California :p

Quote from Zed

We're roughly twice the size of California :p

er, right, I was thinking of the UK.

..haha, the magazine plug was one thing, but just linking to your forums when you haven't posted in weeks is pretty blatant advertising.

I posted there a few times a while ago, seemed like that place is as inactive as SP. at least the debate area was.

Quote from Zed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_(graphical) There are 79 countries with populations below a million. If you bundle them together then their per capita medals would be below ours. With that many people in small countries, you expect at least one of them to win a medal, and whichever one it was would shoot their country to the top of the per capita rankings because they can abandon the populations of countries who won nothing. For comparison, imagine the US medal winners had all been from three states. You'd be justified in saying those states were athletically spectacular but the other 47 states would drag you down in the per capita rankings.

The sensible thing to do is only look at countries which you would have predicted would win medals. That eliminates the statistical glitches.

Jamaica thrashed us all.

As for India and China, yes, they did pretty shit. You'd expect them to - they don't really have the per capita GDP to train athletes like GB and the US.

I'm not exactly certain what your point is, I've read this post a few times and I still don't fully understand what you're trying to get at. Unless you're really just treating this as a plain discussion of system of which we decide the most winning team. In which case..

At the beijing Olympics there were 302 medals up for grabs.
America has what? 313,382,000 People. Let's say for the sake of argument the USA won 301 medals that would leave it at about 1041136 population per medal rounded down.
If the last medal is won by Grenada they still have 110,821 population per medal.

We still lose. Meaning that it's a completely unfair and ridiculous way to decide who over all won the most.

Quote from Exilement

You could compare the US to Europe as a whole, but comparing the entire US to European nations that are smaller than individual states doesn't make much sense.

I don't think that comparing the USA to the entirety of Europe is fair at all. As demonstrated previously, population amount doesn't always mean your going to have good athletes *looking at you, India*
Because all the European countries got to compete individually with separate teams.
That's like if we had a team for every state and then claimed that although none of the states alone broke the top ten, they dominated if you add all their medals up.

My point was that you'd expect a small country to do well per capita. As it happens, Grenada got the glory, but we'd be just as impressed by Guernsey. You can ignore whichever small countries top the charts because some small countries were bound to. It's a form of confirmation bias - you see the small country at the top but you ignore the 60 small countries which got no medals at all.

The per capita comparisons become relevant when you're looking at countries which you would expect to be up there, or which won three or four medals. Otherwise it's just law of averages.


This discussion is no longer about patriotism. The maths has become interesting.

Quote from Zed

My point was that you'd expect a small country to do well per capita. As it happens, Grenada got the glory, but we'd be just as impressed by Guernsey. You can ignore whichever small countries top the charts because some small countries were bound to. It's a form of confirmation bias - you see the small country at the top but you ignore the 60 small countries which got no medals at all.
I'm not impressed just because it's a small country, I'm impressed because he broke Americas 28 year strangle hold on the 400m.

The per capita comparisons become relevant when you're looking at countries which you would expect to be up there, or which won three or four medals. Otherwise it's just law of averages.
I don't get it

I think I've proven that the per capita isn't worthy of deciding who the over all biggest winner is. If we're even talking about the most winning team anymore.

Just because you expect a country to be there doesn't mean you can use a completely silly and broken system to take away from their victory. I'm really starting to think that people are just using excuses because America won again.

We got the most medals, we dominated the most events.
Until we come up with another system that's fair, I will hold it as the team that has most medals is the over all most winning team.



Or do you mean as a competition between the small countries that just don't have enough athletes to compete in all the events?

You're all faggots.

The US beat all of you and you're jealous.

:I

A 1st world country with a high population and reasonably low population density won the Olympics?

Stop the fucking presses.

Quote from Myself

A 1st world country with a high population and reasonably low population density won the Olympics?

Stop the fucking presses.

if your shit won you'd be acting all high and mighty too

I haven't seen a single person in school or within my family celebrating

Quote from 2-D

if your shit won you'd be acting all high and mighty too

straya has a tiny population, and no i wouldn't

acting all high and mighty because some people from my country did well would be silly. I didn't do shit.

i didn't even KNOW until i read his fucking post. and i still don't know, cause i don't even give a fuck to check

i didn't even know it had ended