The 2016 Rio Olympic Games is right around the corner, so it is the perfect time to talk a bit about how we can use science to predict the results. Daniel Johnson, a professor of microeconomics at the Colorado College created a simple prediction model, that, over the past 5 Olympic Games, was able to achieve 94% agreement between the predicted and actual medal counts per nation. What is even more amazing is that the model doesn’t even take into consideration the athletic abilities of any of these contenders.
____________________
The paper “A Tale of Two Seasons: Participation and Medal Counts
at the Summer and Winter Olympic Games” is available here:
A media article about this on Forbes:
The Olympics subreddit is available here:
From an earlier episode:
Two Minute Papers – Narrow Band Liquid Simulations –
WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK OUR GENEROUS PATREON SUPPORTERS WHO MAKE TWO MINUTE PAPERS POSSIBLE:
David Jaenisch, Sunil Kim, Julian Josephs, Daniel John Benton, Dave Rushton-Smith, Benjamin Kang.
We also thank Experiment for sponsoring our series. –
Subscribe if you would like to see more of these! –
The thumbnail background image was created by Rob124 –
Splash screen/thumbnail design: Felícia Fehér –
Károly Zsolnai-Fehér’s links:
Facebook →
Twitter →
Web →
source