How many medals will the U.S. walk away with at this year's Winter Olympics? What about perennial runner-up China? Two brothers, Dan and Tim Graettinger, think they have the answers, and you’ll be surprised to hear how they got them.
Dan thought up the idea to Nate Silver the Olympics while watching NBC’s nightly medal count during the 2010 Winter games. Inspired by Google’s 20% rule, where you dedicate 20% of work time to personal interests, Dan pitched the project to his brother, a data analyst. Over the next four years, the two collected more than 30 datasets and ran regression after regression until they found a model that matched the past two Winter Olympics with incredible accuracy. The first chart pictured below shows which countries the brothers’ model predicts will win it all at this year’s Games.
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