Olympic Standings by Weighted Average

Many of the Mathletes watched the Olympics at Sochi and marveled at the high level of competition. The American media reported that USA came in second in the overall standings. Of course, Russia, the host country won overall honors. Most of the American media reported total medals. Using this method, they valued a bronze equal to a silver and gold.

However, in Norway, it was a different story. They reported Norway in second place using Gold medals as the scale. Norway had the second most gold medals after Russia.

In Canada, their media reported yet another criteria for determining who won, etc. They used a weighted average giving 5 points for gold, 3 points for silver and 1 point for bronze. The New York Times used a 3-2-1 methodology.

I had the children use the medal standings from the last six winter Olympics to determine if total medal count and weighted average would create different results. After they gave weights to each medal, they totaled the points and then re-ranked the countries. In 2014, Canada was the big winner going from 4^th place to 2^nd place and Switzerland went from 10^th place to 8^th place. In 2010, South Korea went from 7^th place to 5^th place.

We also looked at other methods such as:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->1.    1.  <!--[endif]-->Highest ratio of golds to total medals (Switzerland came in first in that category with 6/11).

<!--[if !supportLists]-->2.    2.  <!--[endif]-->Total medals to population and gold medals to population (Norway was the big winner).

<!--[if !supportLists]-->3.    3.  <!--[endif]-->Total medals by Gross Domestic Product (Slovenia and Latvia were the winners)

<!--[if !supportLists]-->4.    4.  <!--[endif]-->Total medals by number of participants (Netherlands was the winner here)

Please find out how the 5-3-1 and 3-2-1 methods affect the standing for as many Olympics you can. The worksheets for the winter Olympics for 2014, 2010, 2006, 2002, 1998, and 1994 are attached as well as answers.