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There are several ways to calculate who's best, who's second etc. Two main ways are, one, get a weighted sum of the number of medals, and two, sort the medal counts in some order, componentwise.
I remember a weighted sum was used when I was a child, at least used in the USSR. A gold medal was worth 3 points, silver 2, bronze 1. There is too much room here for an arbitrary distrubution of weights between medals (why is one silver medal worth two bronze ones?)
The componentwise sorting ("lexicographical sort", in computer parlance) sounds a bit more reasonable to me, perhaps because I am more used to it. (Not the right place to start another computer science versus mathematics religious war.) The official olympic site sorts the medals in the order: gold, silver, bronze. It also separately counts the standings of the total medal count. This skews the results so that for a while Norway, which had substantially more medals than any other country, but only one gold, was standing below Estonia, which had a total of two medals, all gold.
I think a better way would be to sort the medals in the following order: total count, gold count, silver count, bronze count. (Of course, the last component would be superfluous.) Obviously, the total count is sorted in the ascending order, the rest in the descending order. It seems that at least one of the sources[myway] is using this way of ordering.
Further improvement may be needed to avoid counting medals of all values as the same for the total. That is, instead of counting one bronze or one silver or one gold equally for the total, one could introduce a weighted total. Again, the problem here would be it is too arbitrary.
Disclaimer. I don't really care.
I remember a weighted sum was used when I was a child, at least used in the USSR. A gold medal was worth 3 points, silver 2, bronze 1. There is too much room here for an arbitrary distrubution of weights between medals (why is one silver medal worth two bronze ones?)
The componentwise sorting ("lexicographical sort", in computer parlance) sounds a bit more reasonable to me, perhaps because I am more used to it. (Not the right place to start another computer science versus mathematics religious war.) The official olympic site sorts the medals in the order: gold, silver, bronze. It also separately counts the standings of the total medal count. This skews the results so that for a while Norway, which had substantially more medals than any other country, but only one gold, was standing below Estonia, which had a total of two medals, all gold.
I think a better way would be to sort the medals in the following order: total count, gold count, silver count, bronze count. (Of course, the last component would be superfluous.) Obviously, the total count is sorted in the ascending order, the rest in the descending order. It seems that at least one of the sources
Further improvement may be needed to avoid counting medals of all values as the same for the total. That is, instead of counting one bronze or one silver or one gold equally for the total, one could introduce a weighted total. Again, the problem here would be it is too arbitrary.
Disclaimer. I don't really care.
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По делу: вот не люблю я этот командный зачет. Как можно равнять медаль в хоккее и медаль в одной из многих дисциплин, например, шорт-трека?
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Тоже проблема...
Вот если учитывать количество денег, затраченных на подготовку победителей, тогда оно да...
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Я тоже не люблю командный зачёт. Кроме того, что медали одного достоинства неравны по напряжению сил, но и вообще, какое отношение, допустим, хоккейная команда страны имеет к слаломистам той же страны? Не война же вроде. (Но хорошая замена войне, конечно, для самолюбия националистов.) То есть, я имею в виду, хоккеисты плюс слаломисты — на самом деле не команда, и их ни к чему считать вместе.
Но просто как упражнение по философии сортировки, пожалуй, тема вполне годится.
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Why bronze counts and fourth place not ? None of them have won.
There is a big difference for me between winning, and also being around.
So I count for myself in Soviet system of 3-2-1's, with all the aribtrariness
of the weights
PS Estonia actually has 3 golds
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Это, ИМХО, наиболее ценная фраза в вашем посте. Зачем, вообще, нужно сравнивать количество медалей. То есть я понимаю, для жителей спортивной сверхдержавы приятно осознавать, что "мы лучше всех". Ну так пусть каждый желающий сам себе решает, чем его страна отличилась: одни получили больше всех медалей, другие - больше всех золотых, третьи - выиграли хоккейный турнир. Пусть люди получат удовольствие. Старую советскую систему с весами я не люблю, потому что она придаёт какой-то полуофициальный характер неофициальному (и ненужному) соревнованию между странами: фиксируя веса и вычисляя очки вы как бы подчёркиваете важность этого подсчёта.
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