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Olympic Medal Table

The preoccupation with the Olympic medal table by the UK news media is somewhat bizarre.  Channel 4 have an interesting gizmo which allows you to adjust the medal table for population, GDP, human rights, freedom, national debt, and carbon dioxide emissions - click here for the 2008 table and here for the 2012 table.   In 2008, North Korea came out top once one adjusts for GDP!

Apparently the medal table used by US tv networks in 2008 looked at number of medals rather than number of golds - strangely this methodology placed the US at the top of the 2008 table!  



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