Levelling the statistical playing field

Summary

More or Less – "Levelling the Statistical Playing Field"

BBC Radio 4 | August 20, 2012
Host: Tim Harford
Guests: Charlotte MacDonald, Professor Megan Bussey, Daniel Tammet

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Episode Overview

This episode of More or Less explores the fairness (or lack thereof) in how Olympic medal tables compare nations, especially when countries differ vastly in size and wealth. Host Tim Harford and colleague Charlotte MacDonald discuss whether adjusting medal tables for factors like population and GDP creates a more level statistical playing field. The episode also features an interview with savant and author Daniel Tammet, focusing on his unique relationship with numbers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Unchanged Medal Table and Inherent Inequality (00:13–00:52)

• Tim opens by noting that the top nations in the Olympic medal table remain almost identical between the Beijing 2008 and London 2012 Games.
• Raises the question: Are Olympic medal tables "fair," given national disparities in population and wealth?

Tim Harford: "You could argue that standard medal tables are a bit unfair because countries are so unequal. We've been wondering whether it's possible to level the playing field. I don't mean the actual playing fields…but the statistical playing field." (00:29)

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2. Adjusting for Population and Wealth (00:52–02:14)

• Charlotte introduces the episode’s "thought experiment": If we normalize for countries’ wealth and population, what should medal counts look like?
• Professor Megan Bussey explains why population and wealth are highly predictive of Olympic success:
  • Talent Pool: Larger populations increase the chances of exceptional athletes.
  • Wealth: Necessary for sports infrastructure and giving young people the leisure to specialize in sports.

Prof. Megan Bussey: "You need to have basically a lot of people born in your country to have that kind of raw athletic ability…A family that really needs all of its children in order to feed itself…is not going to be able to have one…devote 8 or 10 hours a day to being good at diving or archery or gymnastics." (01:14–02:14)

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3. Who Overachieves and Why? (02:14–03:51)

• The team creates a "benchmark" table using predictions from Bussey, then compares actual results to expectations.
• Notable overachievers:
  • Small/Low-Income Sprint Stars: Jamaica, Kenya, Ethiopia—all strong in track and field.
  • Wealthy Small Countries: New Zealand, due to strong sporting tradition.
  • Major Powers: China and the US won around twice as many medals as the statistical model would predict. Even Australia, despite domestic disappointment, surpassed expectations.
• Eastern Bloc success: Former Soviet states (Ukraine, Hungary, Belarus) still benefit from long-ago investment in sports.

Charlotte MacDonald: “China and the US got around twice as many medals as Megan's table suggested they should.” (03:06)

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4. Host Country Advantage (03:31–03:51)

• UK "overachieved" with 65 medals, against a predicted 32—attributed to host-nation effects and increased investment in sports in the run-up to the Olympics.

Charlotte MacDonald: “…host countries tend to invest more in sport in the years preceding the Olympics.” (03:44)

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5. Underachievers: Big Populations, Few Medals (03:51–04:50)

• Large, populous countries often win fewer medals than expected.
  • Examples: Nigeria and Pakistan each have populations over 150 million, but no medals.
  • India: Expected to have 34 medals, only received six.
  • Brazil: Predicted for 33, won 17.
• The duo discusses reasons: low per capita income, less access to facilities/programming, and limited opportunities for talented athletes.

Prof. Megan Bussey: “Given the number of people, gee, there ought to be some really extraordinary Olympic talent there. But…with income levels, either…they don’t happen to live in a place where there are sports programs and sports facilities that enable them to develop that talent.” (04:08–04:32)

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6. Cultural and Structural Factors (04:50–05:18)

• Wealthy nations without an Olympic sporting tradition (e.g., Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, Hong Kong) underachieve.
• Some focus more on winter than summer games (Austria, Switzerland, Canada, Norway).

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7. Numbers as a Universal Language – Daniel Tammet (05:18–08:47)

Tammet’s Unique Perspective

• The episode turns from sports to a personal interview with Daniel Tammet—a mathematician, savant, and author inspired by numbers.
• Tammet describes his childhood and neurological condition, which shaped his extraordinary memory and numerical perception.

Daniel Tammet: “…my brain evolved a little bit differently. The connections have gone to different parts of the brain that maybe other brains don’t have.” (05:44–06:36)

Pi Recital as Poetry

• Tammet recited 22,514 digits of Pi, describing it “as a poem” because of the colors and shapes he sees in numbers.

Daniel Tammet: “I described pi as a poem because for me, the colours and the shapes that I experience…make it a landscape full of life, full of beauty.” (07:10)

Imagination and Mathematics

• Tammet advocates teaching maths as a universal, imaginative subject, arguing that all children have a latent affinity for numbers.
• He laments that many educational institutions quash curiosity and imagination in mathematics.

Daniel Tammet: "Children have wonderful imaginations and schools seem to do so much to work the imagination out of them. And we need to show that mathematics is all about imagination. It's the science of imagination." (08:23–08:47)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Inequity:
  “Standard medal tables are a bit unfair because countries are so unequal. We've been wondering whether it's possible to level the playing field.”
  — Tim Harford (00:29)

• On Olympic Investment:
  "They're still reaping the benefits of that infrastructure."
  — Charlotte MacDonald, on post-Soviet countries (03:24)

• On Math and Imagination:
  "Mathematics...is the science of imagination."
  — Daniel Tammet (08:46)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:13–00:52: Introducing the unequal nature of medal tables
• 00:52–02:14: The basis for predicting expected medal counts (population and GDP)
• 02:29–03:16: Overachievers and athletic outliers in Olympic history
• 03:16–03:51: The UK’s performance and the host advantage
• 03:57–04:45: Underachievers—large nations with unexpectedly few medals
• 05:18–06:52: Daniel Tammet's upbringing and neurodiversity
• 07:01–07:19: Pi recital as poetic experience
• 07:56–08:47: The role of imagination in learning mathematics

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Summary

This episode of “More or Less” deftly unpacks the numerical (and social) inequalities behind Olympic medal tables, demonstrating that wealth, population, and infrastructure loom large behind the drama of sporting achievement. The latter half, featuring Daniel Tammet, moves from international comparison to a reflection on individual brilliance and the imagination inherent in mathematics, echoing the program’s central theme: numbers don’t just explain the world—they unite and humanize it.

Transcript

[BBC Announcer]

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[Tim Harford]

hello and welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service. The London Olympics are over and it turns out that the list of the top 10 countries which won the most Olympic medals barely changed between 2008 and 2012. The top four the the USA, China, Russia and Great Britain were identical. Just one country dropped out, Ukraine. It was replaced by Japan. But you could argue that standard medal tables are a bit unfair because countries are so unequal. We've been wondering whether it's possible to level the playing field. I don't mean the actual playing fields, which we hope are level already, but the statistical playing field. Charlotte MacDonald's here. Come on, Charlotte, what have you been doing?

[Charlotte MacDonald]

Well, this is the thought experiment we set ourselves. If you adjust for the fact that some countries are richer than others and some have more people in them, can we work out what we think the final medal tally should look like based on only those factors? Professor Megan Bussey from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in the US Explains why this is useful.

[Professor Megan Bussey]

Extraordinary athletic talent of the sort you need to win Olympic medals doesn't occur very often. And so you need to have basically a lot of people born in your country to have a lot of people born who have that kind of raw athletic ability. The second thing that's going to help you is frankly, if you're a wealthy country, it matters both because you need the kind of sports infrastructure necessary to train athletes. The second reason that it matters is that you need to have people be wealthy enough that children or teenagers or young adults depending on the sport, can have enough leisure time to devote themselves to specializing in these very particular set of abilities. So a family that really needs all of its children in order to feed itself and support itself is not going to be able to have one of its 12 or 14 year old children devote 8 or 10 hours a day to being good at diving or archery or gymnastics or that kind of thing.

[Charlotte MacDonald]

Now we asked Megan to help us create benchmarks for what we expect a country to get. Then, armed with this table of predictions, we were able to compare them with a 2012 medal table to see which countries punched above or below their weight.

[Tim Harford]

So who are the overachievers?

[Charlotte MacDonald]

Well, one group are the small countries or low income countries that have disproportionate depth in track and field sports for which there are lots of medals available, including Jamaica, who got 12, but also Kenya and Ethiopia. But on the basis of population and GDP alone, Meghan would expect them to get none. There are also reasonably wealthy countries with small populations that overachieve, perhaps because they have a strong sporting tradition, like New Zealand. But some of the biggest overachievers were those at the top of the medal table. China and the US Got around twice as many medals as Meghan's table suggested they should. And even Australia, which has lamented its performance in 2012, winning 11 fewer medals than at the Beijing Olympics, is still punching above its weight, according to Meghan.

[Tim Harford]

I noticed that quite a lot of former Eastern bloc countries seem to do quite well. Ukraine, Hungary, Belarus, and so on.

[Charlotte MacDonald]

Yeah, exactly. Meghan says it's part partly because they invested in Olympic sports during the Soviet era. They're still reaping the benefits of that infrastructure.

[Interviewer]

Now.

[Tim Harford]

We're being very modest. Sitting here in London. We should say the UK did jolly well, didn't we?

[Charlotte MacDonald]

Yes. Meghan estimates that Team GB should expect to get 32 medals, when in fact, they got 65 in total. She attributes this in part to the fact that host countries tend to invest more in sport in the years preceding the Olympics.

[Tim Harford]

Okay, but it's also the taking part that counts, not just the winning. So what about the countries that didn't do so well?

[Charlotte MacDonald]

Well, looking at the table, there are some big countries that didn't do very well at all. For example, Nigeria and Pakistan, which have populations over 150 million people, got no medals.

[Professor Megan Bussey]

Given the number of people, gee, there ought to be some really extraordinary Olympic talent there. But it could be the case that given income levels in that country, either the people who are lucky to be endowed with that athletic ability have the leisure to be able to develop those talents, or they don't happen to live in a place where there are sports programs and sports facilities that enable them to develop that talent.

[Charlotte MacDonald]

According to Megan's table, Brazil should have got 33, but they actually got 17 medals, while India got only six medals. And Meghan would have expected it to get 34 and feature in the top 10 nations.

[Tim Harford]

And are there other factors that tend to make you likely to be an underachiever?

[Charlotte MacDonald]

Yes, there are countries with relatively high per capita incomes but no strong tradition of playing Olympic sports, such as Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Hong Kong. There were also countries that put a bigger emphasis on the Winter Olympics than the Summer Olympics, such as Austria, Switzerland, Canada, and Norway. If you want to find out more about this, then go to our website, BBC.co.ukmoreorless where we have an article with more information and tables.

[Tim Harford]

Well, thank you very much, Charlotte. I'm sure people will on more or less, we think numbers help to understand the real world, but for Daniel Tammet, they're a lot more important than that. For him, numbers don't just help him to understand the real world, they're his ticket to being part of it. I've been talking to Daniel about his new book, Thinking in Numbers, and I asked him first to explain how he'd managed to learn Icelandic in one week.

[Daniel Tammet]

It goes back in part to the way that my mind, I guess, evolved as a young child. I was. I had a very withdrawn, very awkward childhood and we didn't have a name for it at the time. My parents came up with all kinds of names, hypersensitive, and my dad, in his typically colorful way, called me cac handed. I was very useless with everything that was the slightest bit practical. And in fact, the word that they were looking for that didn't exist at the time was high functioning autistic savant syndrome. It's a bit of a mouth hole, it's true. And it just means that my brain evolved a little bit differently. The connections have gone to different parts of the brain that maybe other brains don't have. Those connections don't reach into those parts of the brain. And it gave me certain handicaps that I've had to work extremely hard to overcome, such as this conversation we're having now wouldn't have been possible for me quite a few years ago. I've learned to acquire those social skills and to find a way of putting feat in both worlds. The world of numbers and the world of people, the world of language and books.

[Interviewer]

And nearly a decade ago you stood in the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford and recited Pi2. How many digits was it?

[Daniel Tammet]

It was 22,514 decimal places. Took five hours and nine minutes. I described PI as a poem because for me, the colours and the shapes that I experience when I think in this number and describe it as a landscape full of life, full of beauty.

[Interviewer]

This is a book about, in part about your relationship with numbers. So I was expecting to read all these extraordinary tales that I couldn't relate to. But actually, in many ways the anecdotes that you recall, the stories you tell, are really stories of just a child who's curious about the world and curious about numbers. I remember doing at least one of the things you described doing. So perhaps many children have some kind of facility with numbers and a natural curiosity with numbers. And I wonder whether you feel that the adult world, our educational institutions are terribly good at tapping into that.

[Daniel Tammet]

Absolutely. I mean, mathematics has meant so much to me because it has given me a way of smuggling my way into the world of people. Numbers are everywhere. They describe patterns that unify the world and makes it what it is. And so often in class we lose that sense of mathematics as a universal subject that speaks to every part of human experience. My own experience of teaching, which was with children who were terrified of mathematics, as many children are, I realized that they actually had a pretty good understanding of numbers and it was really just a case of appealing to their imaginations. And children have wonderful imaginations and schools seem to do so much to work the imagination out of them. And we need to show that mathematics is all about imagination. It's the science of imagination.

[Tim Harford]

Daniel Tammet and that's all we have time for this week. Please keep your questions, your comments and your suggestions coming in to More or [e-mail] and we have a brand new website with print versions of our best stories. It's BBC.co.uk please check it out and perhaps subscribe to our chart topping download. Until next week, goodbye.

[Charlotte MacDonald]

More or Less was presented by Tim Harford, the Financial Times undercover economist. The producer is Richard Knight.

[BBC Announcer]

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