I hope you enjoy the Summer Olympic games over the next couple of weeks. I plan on watching as many events as I can given my schedule. I’m on vacation this week so you’d think I can watch a lot but I actually can’t (also explaining why this week’s update is a little sparce).

Anyway – I thought it would be interesting to take a different kind of view with respect to the ‘medal count’ you’ll see in the paper each day. So…  I asked ChatGPT (which I’m trying to learn how to use) to examine medal efficiency by looking at medals per country per capita.

This gives a perspective on how efficiently a country can produce medals relative to its population size. Here’s how the countries ranked at the Tokyo 2021 Summer Olympics (according to Chat GPT)*:

  1. Netherlands
    • Total Medals: 36
    • Population: 17 million
    • Medals Per Capita: 2.12 medals per million people
  2. Australia
    • Total Medals: 46
    • Population: 25 million
    • Medals Per Capita: 1.84 medals/million
  3. Great Britain
    • Total Medals: 65
    • Population: 67 million
    • Medals Per Capita: 0.97 medals/million
  4. Italy
    • Total Medals: 40
    • Population: 60 million
    • Medals Per Capita: 0.67 medals/million
  5. France
    • Total Medals: 33
    • Population: 65 million
    • Medals Per Capita: 0.51 medals/million
  6. ROC (Russian Olympic Committee)
    • Total Medals: 71
    • Population: 146 million
    • Medals Per Capita: 0.49 medals/million
  7. Japan
    • Total Medals: 58
    • Population: 126 million
    • Medals Per Capita: 0.46 medals/million
  8. Germany
    • Total Medals: 37
    • Population: 83 million
    • Medals Per Capita: 0.45 medals/million
  9. USA
    • Total Medals: 113
    • Population: 331 million
    • Medals Per Capita: 0.34 medals/million
  10. China
    • Total Medals: 88
    • Population: 1441 million
    • Medals Per Capita: 0.06 medals/million
How Chat GPT Calculated the Results:
  1. Medal Counts: Gathered the total medal counts for the top ten countries from the 2021 Summer Olympic Games.
  2. Population Data: Collected the population data for these countries (in millions).
  3. Calculation: Divided the total number of medals by the population size for each country to get the number of medals per million people.
  4. Ranking: Sorted the countries based on their medals per capita in descending order.

ChatGPT: “The Netherlands & Australia stand out as the top performers, showcasing their strong sporting programs and ability to achieve high Olympic success per capita.”

* I mentioned this post to someone I’m here with in Iowa and they questioned ChatGPT’s answer… as he knew the Bahamas won two track & field gold medals in the 2021 Olympics (true).

With a population of only 400,000 that’d be 5 medals per million – far better than Netherlands at 2/million. The lesson…  make sure you double check everything you get back from Char GPT!

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