Colorado College Professor’s Olympic Medals Prediction 93 Percent Accurate
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.
An economics professor’s Olympic medals predictions have once again scored high marks for accuracy — even though his formula doesn’t consider individual athletes’ abilities.
Dr. Daniel K.N. Johnson, an assistant professor of economics at Colorado College, accurately predicted how many medals each participating nation would win at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, and how many of those would be gold. There is a 93 percent correlation between his forecasts and the final medal standings, and an 84 percent correlation for gold medals. Johnson’s forecasts are based on non-athletic data. He considers only per capita income, population, climate, political structure and home field advantage.
Johnson’s formula accurately predicted 13 of the 14 nations who earned the most medals during the Games. The only exception was 13th place South Korea, which was not included due to data limitations.
Johnson’s model accurately forecast that Germany would top the medal count. He predicted that the nation would capture 28 medals, 10 of them gold. Germany ended the games with 29 medals and 11 golds. Johnson predicted the United States would win 22 medals overall and eight gold. The U.S. won 25 medals and nine golds.
Johnson also has used his formula to predict results for the 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia and Athens, Greece, respectively, and for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Before the Athens Olympics, Johnson predicted the U.S. team would win 103 medals, including 37 gold; the U.S. team won 103 with 35 gold. He said Russia would win 94 medals. It won 92. For the Sydney games, he predicted 90 medals for the U.S., with 33 gold. The Americans won 97 and 39. For Australia, the host, he predicted 54 medals. Australia won 56.
