Olympic rankings

Check out the two images of the 2008 summer Olympic medal counts.  What do you notice?

Clicking on either of these images will show them larger in new windows.

The Olympic Games are competitions between athletes in individual or team events and are not meant to be between countries. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) does not recognize global ranking per country.  However, the National Olympic Committee (NOC) does give rankings based on the number of medals won.  News organizations from around the world do release an Olympic medal table, sometimes with possible bias and controversy.

This activity is about trying to find a fair ranking method and considering which aspects of a country might negatively affect such a ranking.  Students consider how the Olympic medal table, which shows the total Olympic medal count by country, should be determined.  Students might create formulas to consider the relative value of a gold, silver and bronze medal.  Past formulas for calculating the medal table standings from various Olympic games are analyzed and used.

RankingOlympicTeams2018.pdf

For members we have an editable Word docx and solutions.

RankingOlympicTeams2018.docx       RankingOlympicTeams2018-solutions.pdf

 The following CCSS can be addressed: 5.OA.1, 5.OA.2, 6.EE.2, 6.EE.6, 7.EE.3

Or use one of our other Olympic posts:

Olympic Ski Jumping – Students explore the rubric for scoring ski jumps by style and distance.  Is scoring bias eliminated in this method? 5.NBT, 5.OA, 6.NS, 6.EE, 7.NS, 7.EE, HSA.CED

Lighting the Olympic Torch – Students study the focus of a parabolic mirror and hypothesize why that place gets so hot with the sun shining on it. 4.G.1, 4.G.3, 7.G.2

The Olympic Torch Trip – Students examine world-class sport, South Korea, the cooperation of Nations, unifying music, participation rates, metric conversions, and per person distances traveled. 6.RP.A, 6.SP.B, 7.SP, HSN.Q.A

Big Air Snowboarding – Students note orientation of ski boarder (regular or goofy) and then try to describe boarder’s rotations with angles and reflections. 8.G.A, HSG, HSG.CO, HSG.SRT, MP4, MP7

The Cost of hosting the Olympic Games – Students examine the cost of hosting this huge event. Is it profitable? How much is that?  Does a country recoup that cost? 7.RP, 8.F.A, HSF.IF.C

from Yummy Math https://www.yummymath.com/2018/olympic-rankings/