Today We Bring You a Nerd’s Eye View of the Olympics


A couple of days ago I whined about the annoyingly widespread humanization of Olympic athletes. Enough! We all know that what’s really important about sporting events is statistics, and the more obscure the better. So here are my candidates for nerdiest Olympic coverage so far. First up is Ryan Wallerson’s look at the best athletes of the Sochi games. Not by measuring scores or times or anything normal like that, but by measuring which athlete scored the most standard deviations from the mean in their event. The winner is Poland’s Kamil Stoch in ski jumping:

Next up is a look at which countries have done the best. Not by crudely counting medals or per capita medals or any of that nonsense. This chart looks how countries have done so far compared to how many medals they were predicted to win. The big winner, at 183 percent, is the Netherlands, thanks to their kick-ass performance in speed skating. The most dismal performance so far is from South Korea, at 31 percent. But there are still two days left!

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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