Tag Archives: NBC

THE WAY THEY SHOW THE OLYMPIC MEDAL STANDINGS IS WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!!

Post #132 from Dr. Crankenfuss, The World’s Awesomest Raving and Rapping blogger –

This won’t be one of my usual trying-to-be-funny posts. It will be one of my this-is-so-logical-I-will-change-your-mind posts. It’s about the Winter Olympics, which I’ve been watching. Not all the time. I don’t care that much about the curling (huh??) or the ice dancing. But I really like the downhill skiing and the snowboard and ski tricks type of stuff. I don’t know how they do any of those things. Those people are all somewhere between being total superheroes and being totally crazy (since they could die if they landed wrong).

But this post is really about THE MEDAL COUNT STANDINGS. They’re figuring them out WRONG!! I spent a bunch of time calculating this and right now it doesn’t make that big a difference EXCEPT WHO SHOULD BE #1. After 14 days, TV and the internet sites have the USA in first and Russia in 2nd. I’m all for the USA winning, but I like being fair too. And what they’re using to judge is TOTAL MEDALS.

THAT IS WRONG, NOT LOGICAL, AND UNFAIR!! That means they’re counting a bronze medal the same as a gold medal. Everyone knows a gold medal is worth way more. If the USA had 20 gold medals and nothing else, surely that’s better than some other country getting 21 bronze medals and nothing else. But the way they do it now, that “bronze” country would be ahead.

So I calculated the standings a better way. I gave 3 points for a gold, 2 points for a silver, and 1 point for a bronze. That seems totally fair to me. When I add it all up that way, the standings are changed. Not by much, but now Russia is barely ahead of the USA. I’ve shown how it all works in the chart below. (I got the info on Friday night, February 21, from fansided.com, but I added my own column at the end.)

Look at the last two columns and see how the Dr. Crankenfuss method changes things.
Look at the last two columns and see how the Dr. Crankenfuss method changes things.

As you can see I’ve put red circles around the countries that are getting “cheated” by the system people are using now. And I put a double circle around Belarus at #17. Man, they should be 5 places higher. If I was a Belarussian, I’d be really ticked. (But first I’d have to figure out where my country was.)

Anyway, that’s all I got. But I think the Dr. Crankenfuss way is way more fair, and that it should be used everywhere. So go, USA, and get enough medals in the next two days to win it all both ways!!

From Dr. Crankenfuss,
Your Dude with the ‘Tude
Who’s against standings that are skewed