The Olympics Are A Time For Statistics

Early on in the 2014 Winter Olympics, many of Canada's medals had been won by athletes from Quebec in Freestyle Skiing and Short Track.  Six of the first nine medals, in fact. It prompted some journalist from the Globe and Mail to wonder if we should start seeing Quebec flags being flown by the fans instead of Canadian flags. His ridiculous and troll-bait opinions aside, it gave me a great idea to have a little fun with the medal stats.

I took each medal winner and tallied their home province (as listed by olympic.ca). For team events, only one medal counted in the tally, so I split the medal among the teammates (i.e. for the women's bobsleigh, half the medal went to Alberta and half to PEI).  In the end, Quebec had the most medals, but it wasn't a runaway.  Here are the standings:

Province	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
Quebec	3.45	3.75	2.00	9.20
Ontario	3.12	2.78	0.00	5.90
British Columbia	1.20	2.36	1.00	4.56
Alberta	0.64	1.11	1.00	2.75
Saskatchewan	0.17	0.00	1.00	1.17
Manitoba	0.89	0.00	0.00	0.89
Prince Edward Island	0.50	0.00	0.00	0.50
Nova Scotia	0.04	0.00	0.00	0.04
Total	10	10	5	25

No medals from NB, NL, NT, NU or YK.

What does it all mean? Not much, really. Some of it is a function of population, some of it is location of training facilities, some by how teams are chosen, and some is luck. But I think it's an interesting chance to crunch some numbers.  Here's another way to look on it:

12 medals were in men's sports, 11 in ladies, and 2 from mixed competitions.

What about the sports themselves?  Some events have more medals to give out than others, but whatever:

• 9 - Freestyle Skiing
• 3 - Figure Skating and Short Track
• 2 - Curling, Hockey, Snowboard, and Speed Skating
• 1 - Alpine Skiing and Bobsleigh

Great Success!