The research of Olympic medal ranking methods

Olympic medal tally has always been focused by the international media and spectators. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship of medal tally and the population, wealth and climate, and formulate a standard method that measures Olympic medal tally according to the population size, wealth and climate. At first we compared five feasible ranking methods on 87 nations that win at least one medal on 2008 Olympic, and we found that the ranking based on gold, medals and medal score is more favorable to powerful countries; the ranking based on medal score per capita is more favorable to some less poputated islands countries; the ranking based on medal score per GDP is more favorable to some poor Africa and Central Asia countries. Then we formulate a ranking method based on factor contribution, This method consider the influence of the main factors re-entered the medal tally, so this method is more objective and justice.