EVEN an avowed sports philistine like myself cannot help but notice that there is a significant gathering of athletes taking place in London over the next few weeks. The fittest and strongest young men and women from around the world have trained for years for their moment of glory, hoping to win a medal and boost their nation’s standing in the medals table.
If a group of German academics have done their calculations correctly, all that effort will make little or no difference to the final results.
Astonishing as it seems, the group from Ruhr-Universitat Bochum (RUB) has compiled a finals medals table using only statistical data. In doing so they have ignored such irrelevant issues as the fitness of individual athletes, preferring to base their predictions on cultural, demographic, economic, and political data.
Some of this is obvious: large countries have a larger pool of talent, rich countries spend more on training, women from equal-opportunities nations are more likely to score a medal than their less emancipated peers.
Plugging all their data into the model, the team predict that China will top the London 2012 medals table with 102 gongs, closely followed by the USA with 100, with Russia claiming third place with 77 medals. The host nation will benefit from the home advantage and occupy fourth place with 57 medals, ahead of Australia and France. Germany will do relatively poorly, winning 12 percent fewer medals than before at 36, while Brazil will enjoy an early boost ahead of its hosting of the 2016 games.
It will be interesting to see how true these predications are, with the team claiming around 97 percent accuracy when performing retrospective analyses of the Beijing and Sydney Olympiads.
The academics in question are not merely statisticians, though – they are economists. I hate to tar all representative of that branch of mathematics with the same brush, but the current unending crises in the world’s financial markets have just a little to do with the output of economists – so forgive me if I remain sceptical.
One final observation: I was tickled by a footnote on the team’s full list of medals for the 172 nations taking part: “All predictions are rounded to the nearest integer”. Who says economists have no appreciation of the real world?
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Russ Swan
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This week’s top stories: 26 July 2012
1. Microscope lens is a record breaker
A NEW microscope objective from Olympus claims a new world record numerical aperture (NA) of 1.7, enabling the highest Z-resolution ever recorded for a Total Internal…
http://labhomepage.com/2376/microscope-accessory/microscope-lens-is-a-record-breaker/
2. Five-step programme to good pipetting practice
FEW OPERATIONS are as fundamental to modern laboratory practice as pipetting, which plays a vital role in a great many experiments. The importance of accuracy and repeatability…
http://labhomepage.com/2372/publications/five-step-programme-to-good-pipetting-practice/
3. Paperless and tamper-proof documentation for media preparation labs
THE INCREASING reliance of laboratories on electronic documentation brings with it both penalties and bonuses. A move towards paperless status has advantages in cost and…
4. Forensic fingerprinting from spent cartridges
A NOVEL system to image fingerprints on spent gun cartridges has been made available to forensics experts thanks to a custom made lens from Resolve Optics. The new…
http://labhomepage.com/2386/imaging/forensic-fingerprinting-from-spent-cartridges/
5. Downloadable posters cover fluorescent nucleotide probe synthesis
TWO RECENTLY-presented presented research posters discussing dye and quencher phosphoramidites and CPG solid supports for oligonucleotide synthesis are…
6. Crystallography studies boosted by pipetting innovation
AN AUTOMATED screen optimiser from TTP Labtech promises to deliver the simple, reliable and fast set-up of screen plates to streamline laboratory crystallography…
http://labhomepage.com/2405/crystallisation/crystallography-studies-boosted-by-pipetting-innovation/
7. Ceti microscopes outlined in new catalogue
A NEW catalogue outlining the Ceti microscope range has been published by Medline Scientific. The 44-page publication covers the entire Ceti range, launched recently at,…
http://labhomepage.com/2400/microscope/ceti-microscopes-outlined-in-new-catalogue/
8. More details of Planet xMap 2012
LUMINEX has announced further details of its 10th annual Planet xMap congress, to be held on 10-11 October 2012 at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco. Over 500 leading scientists are…
http://labhomepage.com/2381/stem-cell/more-details-of-planet-xmap-2012/
9. Big six banned E coli pathogens now available
FOLLOWING the announcement by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of mandatory testing for six serogroups of E Coli in the food chain, ATCC has made…
http://labhomepage.com/2369/food-safety/big-six-banned-e-coli-pathogens-now-available/
10. Agilent claims European patent victory
AGILENT Technologies has today claimed a victory over rival Affymetrix, after a ruling from the European Patent Office upheld its opposition to a patent including the term…
http://labhomepage.com/2391/genomics/agilent-claims-european-patent-victory/