I'm sure the world needs more analysis of the Olympic Games but it struck me that while the United States and China won the most medals, they also have among the highest populations. It "stands to reason" they should be at the top. I got out my analyzing tools and took a look at which countries fared the best in these Olympic Games.

This may not be my best effort at statistical analysis but I ranked the top 40 countries by medal count; by population; and by Per Capital GDP. I then re-ranked the top 40 countries by their Population/GDP which is the "advantage" ranking. The higher the ranking the better the advantage a country had entering the Olympic Games. The United States has an advantage ranking of 1. The United States has the second largest population among the top 40 medal winners (India, with only 3 overall medals, did not make the top 40). The United States also has the second highest GDP. This put the USA at number one in the Advantage Rankings. It finished number one in the medal count. The United States Advantage Ranking to Medal Count ratio is exactly 1.00, which is the exact mean. The United States performed exactly as would have been predicted based on the advantages it possessed going into the Games. Japan, with an advantage ranking of 11 and the 11th ranked medal count also produced a 1.00.

With this formula we can determine which nations out-performed their expectations and which nations under-performed. At the top of the list is Cuba, which should have the most to be proud of. Their advantage ranking put them 37 out of 40 but they finished with the 12th most medals. Cuba had the largest differential between its ranking and medal count (25). Next on the list is tiny Belarus followed by even tinier Jamaica. Jamaica, with 20 medals and a population under 3 million, has a lot of reason to party. Among the top ten best performers, five were members of the former Soviet Union (Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan). Communism may be dead as a competitive world economic system but it's legacy of state funded athletics appears to have lingering success. 10 of top 15 best performers are countries we would have listed as "communist countries" in 1988.

On the downside we find Switzerland, Indonesia, Turkey, and Argentina. These nations had advantage rankings that should have produced more medals than they actually received.

While the Olympics are ultimately about the athletes there is a strong undercurrent of national pride tied to the games. One of the most humorous and tragic responses to Olympic results was in 2004 Great Britain. Marathoner Paula Radcliffe was the favorite going into the Athens games but she pull up with injury and exhaustion at the 20th mile. The British press was merciless on Radcliffe. One headline read: "She's a Failure and a Quitter...She's British." The headline seemed to demonstrate how much the national conscious was tied to the success of its athletes. The headline, and many like it brought a tremendous amount of soul-searching among the British as the public questioned its response to the lack of success of one athlete.

Advantage Differential	Country
25	Cuba
19	Belarus
18	Jamaica
15	Kenya
13	China
13	Ukraine
9	Azerbaijan
9	Armenia
8	Kazakhstan
7	Australia
6	Georgia
5	Russia
4	New Zealand
4	Hungary
2	South Korea
1	North Korea
0	Japan
0	United States
-1	Romania
-1	Great Britain
-3	Ethiopia
-3	Uzbekistan
-3	Italy
-3	France
-3	Brazil
-4	Germany
-5	Norway
-5	Poland
-6	Slovakia
-7	Netherlands
-8	Spain
-8	Slovenia
-8	Bulgaria
-8	Denmark
-9	Canada
-10	Czech Republic
-11	Argentina
-13	Turkey
-19	Indonesia
-20	Switzerland