Dataviz logo
Communities and Local Government logo Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion logo

Olympic medals result

Current rating 2.7/5 Impact: 2Accuracy: 33 votes
Rate this Impact low high Accuracy low high Your level of expertise
What are ratings?

Ratings let you assess a visualisation according to:
 

Impact:
How much a visualisation makes you take notice of it
 

Accuracy:
How well it portrays the true data behind it
 

Rate visualisations according to your own impressions and expertise. We also ask you to let us know how you rate your own level of expertise in terms of data and visualisation, so that we can filter ratings further in future.
 

For more information on ratings and levels of expertise, see our help page.

Olympic medals result
This infographic presents the final medal count for the 2008 Beijing Olympics in several dimensions. The central part shows the distribution of medals by continent using proportional bubbles to reflect the count. The inner circles of these bubbles are pie charts split by the type of medal. The same technique is applied in the other dimensions presented: medals by geopolitical groups (China, EU, ex soviet republics) , by sport (swimming, athletics, gymnastics) , by GDP and by population. It also contains full information of the final medal count by country and a day-by-day gold medal count (annotated bar char in the lower half). All parts of the visualisation are commented to give an overall picture of the event.
Visual types
Level of expertise
Source:
El Mundo (Spanish Newspaper): elmundo.es (24 August, 2008) (Visualisation information web site)
http://infografistas.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html
Interactive features
None
Benefits & pitfalls to avoid
  • Using area or volume to represent data can distort data values, and exaggerate differences between values. For example, if the radius of the circle is used to represent data values, the area of the circle will quadruple if the data values double. There is also an issue of 'perceptual scaling' - the tendency of people to underestimate areas.
Create your own
  • Bubble charts can be created in a range of standard data applications such as Excel.
  • Bubble maps can be created in a range of desktop GIS applications such as MapInfo and ArcGIS.
  • Tables can be created in a range of standard data applications such as Excel.