With the 2016 Rio Olympics just coming to a close, of course I have to do some analysis on the medals and performances. However, I didn't really like either method I typically saw, that being either sorting nations by golds won or sorting by total medals won. So I created my own method to calculate a weighted total. It was quite simple, but I feel efficient: 3*G + 2S + 1B (where G, S, and B are the nation's number of gold, silver, and bronze medals won).
There were obviously a few other country's that I could have included since they appeared near the top of the medal tables in each of these years - Canada, Spain, Hungary, and Romania all appeared in the top 15 of at least two of the listed Olympic games - but these are all the nations that appeared in more than they didn't.
In terms of trends and comments, the biggest one that jumps out is Great Britain. Massive kudos is deserved for going from 19th to 2nd in just 6 Olympics. Also the way in which France and Italy's paths seem to be tracking each other (especially in these first 3 Olympics) is somewhat humorous. Oh, and speaking of France and Italy, my apologies to their vexillologists - I did the best I could, but there's no good way to "stretch" those flags into lines. I was able to make the Union Jack work and was lucky not to have any harder flags. Let's just say I won't be looking forward to updating this graph if any other than other vertical triband flagged nations or Amerian Samoa or Dominican Republic or Panama or Jamaica or Tanzania become an Olympic powerhouse.
In terms of trends and comments, the biggest one that jumps out is Great Britain. Massive kudos is deserved for going from 19th to 2nd in just 6 Olympics. Also the way in which France and Italy's paths seem to be tracking each other (especially in these first 3 Olympics) is somewhat humorous. Oh, and speaking of France and Italy, my apologies to their vexillologists - I did the best I could, but there's no good way to "stretch" those flags into lines. I was able to make the Union Jack work and was lucky not to have any harder flags. Let's just say I won't be looking forward to updating this graph if any other than other vertical triband flagged nations or Amerian Samoa or Dominican Republic or Panama or Jamaica or Tanzania become an Olympic powerhouse.