From: hal@finney.org
Date: Sat Feb 23 2002 - 01:29:36 MST
At http://www.wellesley.edu/Economics/johnson/ is a link to a paper
which attempted to predict Olympic medal totals using an economic model.
They did a regression analysis based on per capital GDP, population,
climate and political system. It is claimed that this model has made
accurate predictions in the past, with a correlation coefficient of
about .95.
Here is their prediction from the end of their paper. You can compare
it with the actual results at
http://www.msnbc.com/d/oly2002/medaltable_t.asp. With two more days to
go it appears that the U.S. is considerably ahead of the predictions,
with 30 medals (10 gold), and Russia way behind, with 14 medals (5 gold).
Norway is also ahead on the golds, having already gotten 10.
Country Medals (Gold) Rank 1998 results
------------------------------------------------
Germany 31 (11) [1] 29 (12) [1]
Russia* 21 (10) [2] 18 (9) [3]
U.S.A. 20 (7) [3] 13 (6) [6]
Norway 20 (6) [3] 25 (10) [2]
Austria 16 (4) [5] 17 (3) [4]
Finland 14 (4) [6] 12 (2) [7]
Netherlands* 13 (6) [7] 11 (5) [8]
Switzerland 13 (4) [7] 7 (2) [13]
Italy 11 (3) [9] 10 (2) [9]
Canada 11 (3) [9] 15 (6) [5]
Sweden 10 (3) [11] 3 (0) [15]
P.R. of China* 9 (0) [12] 8 (0) [11]
France 8 (2) [13] 8 (2) [11]
Japan* 7 (6) [14] 10 (5) [9]
South Korea 4 (2) [15] 6 (3) [14]
Iceland 4 (1) [15] 0 (0) [--]
Great Britain 4 (1) [15] 1 (0) [19]
Czech Republic* 4 (1) [15] 3 (1) [15]
Belgium 3 (1) [19] 1 (0) [19]
Australia 3 (1) [19] 1 (0) [19]
Luxembourg 3 (1) [19] 0 (0) [--]
Denmark 3 (1) [19] 1 (0) [19]
(For countries marked with an asterisk not all of the econometric data
was available so they were estimated based on past performance.)
Hal
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