One of the tech tasks before us is to create an infographic and then make it public in some fashion. I have chosen to use infogr.am and made a quick and simple table of the gold medal totals of the Winter Olympics. Overall the program is not difficult to use, though certainly, I could stand to develop my skills on it a little more.
Infographic Link: Winter Olympic Gold Medals
What does this infographic reveal about the Winter Olympic medal totals? One is that there is a fairly high degree of random variance in such an event, not surprising given the relatively small numbers that one works with in the Olympics. The other is that host countries get a significant bump to their medal totals under many circumstances- certainly the Canadians benefited from this bump in Vancouver and the Russians are enjoying it so-far in Sochi.
There are some general trends that can be assessed from the information, though. The first is that Germany has been a consistent top-level performer, and indeed, has by far the most consistently high scores of any of the countries on this list. Aside from the meteoric highs of the Vancouver Olympics, Canada has been improving its overall scores. Considering the events remaining in Sochi, a final total of 7 or 8 Olympic gold medals is likely, indicating that Canada is a contender in the Games, but likely not the top one.
Russian performance has consistently dropped. This will likely reverse due to the 'home ice' advantage in Sochi but even so, the Russians will be very fortunate to do as well as they did in 1994, let alone as well as the Soviet Union traditionally did in the Olympics. Norway is traditionally a top competitor in the games and indeed has more medals than any other country in the all-time standings, but for some reason, had a calamitously bad performance at Salt Lake City, winning only 2 gold medals as opposed to numbers usually around or in excess of ten.
When the Sochi games are finished, it will be interesting to revisit this infographic and see what else can be added to it, if some trends continue or are broken.
Kris, I would have loved to have a visual of the infograph you are referring too. It seems that you gathered a lot of quality information that you could discuss with your students. This would be a great math activity comparing and contrasting medal statistics.
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