WS More or Less: The Winter Olympics
More or Less: Behind the Stats
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 25 February 2018
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What’s the most successful nation? (0’40”) We look at population, GDP per capita and ski areas of the countries with the most medals.
How do you judge a country’s ‘best’ performance? (3.45”)
What are the chances of dead heat in a race? (6’35”) The two-man bobsleigh event ended in a dead heat with both Canada and Germany achieving a time of three minutes 16.86 seconds.
Is this the coldest winter games? (8’41”)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:39.0 | Hello and welcome to more or less your statistical guide to the world and everything around us. |
| 0:44.7 | This week we've had several emails about the Winter Olympics and so we've decided to try and |
| 0:49.3 | answer a few. |
| 0:51.1 | First Roy Evans wrote to ask, |
| 0:54.0 | Can you please tell me what is the most successful nation in the Winter Olympics? |
| 0:58.0 | And how would you measure it? |
| 1:00.0 | Kate Lamble has been having a look. |
| 1:02.0 | Yeah, well, as we record this just before the end of the Olympics on Thursday, the 22nd of February, |
| 1:08.0 | the medal table will tell you that Norway is the answer to Roy's question. |
| 1:11.0 | They've got the most medals medals as well as the joint largest |
| 1:13.8 | number of golds. But what medal tables don't tell you is whether countries are |
| 1:17.8 | punching above their weight in terms of their success. |
| 1:23.0 | Now lots of factors come into play here, |
| 1:25.0 | but to keep it simple, we just thought about three basic things |
| 1:28.0 | that would make it easier for a country to win a medal. |
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