The guess work of Olympic office pools may be a thing of the past.
Tuck associate professor Andrew B. Bernard has brought some of the Olympic fanfare here to Dartmouth with his new research predicting which countries will win the most medals at the games.
An economics professor specializing in international trade, Bernard co-authored the study "Who wins the Olympic Games" with his colleague Meghan Busse at the Yale School of Management.
The idea to create a predictive formula for Olympic success came to Bernard a year ago.
"I always hear people say that the United States didn't win enough, that Great Britain didn't win enough. How many do we expect to win?" he said.
Bernard and Busse spent six months gathering data to determine if any guidelines existed which would indicate the success of a given country and what those guidelines would be.
Their resulting formula predicts that the medals won by a nation in the 2000 Olympic Games will be based on the population, the per capita income and whether the nation is the host country or not. Bernard predicts U.S. athletes will bring home 97 medals from Sydney.
"Athletic talent is probably distributed normally all around the world. More people equals more superstars," Bernard explained. "But population doesn't do a very good job by itself. Athletes have to have access to facilities, nutrition, good coaches. All that takes money."
Additionally, the particular country hosting the competitions usually has an increase in medal winnings. This likely occurs because their athletes are more motivated to perform well in front of the hometown crowd. However, nations that are both large and wealthy have experienced a decline in the number of Olympic medals they win. Bernard said this trend may result from the increase in international athletes who now train in strong countries like the United States. With access to expert coaches and sophisticated facilities, athletes from small or poor nations have a better chance of success in competition.
Midway through the 2000 summer Olympic Games, the Bernard and Busse formula is right on track for the number of American wins. However, their estimates for Germany are not doing as well. While he concedes that the formula may not predict the victories of every country, Bernard said that he and Busse will continue fine-tuning the formula so long as it remains fun. They will modify their paper after the Olympics have finished and the tallies are complete. They will then consider its potential for publication.
In the meantime, the formula has attracted the attention of the international media, appearing in such newspapers as the New York Times and the Financial Times in London. They were also interviewed by Charles Gibson on Good Morning America.
Both he and Busse are looking forward to seeing what the final medal counts are for the Olympics.
Bernard is beginning his second year at Dartmouth. He was persuaded to come to the Tuck School from Yale by his close friend from graduate school, Professor Michael Knetter. Bernard also spent several years teaching in MIT's economic department prior to his work at Yale.
When not studying Olympic formulas, most of his research concerns international trade and its effects on countries.
