How The Olympic Medal Table Explains The World
The medal table provides a concise lesson in world history for the past century, reflecting wars won and lost, economic growth and decline and a country's overall standing on the international stage.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was originally published during the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and has been updated for the Tokyo Olympics this summer.
Imagine a Martian trying to make sense of this world and the only available data are the Summer Olympic medal tables from the past century.
How much would that explain? Quite a lot, it turns out. In fact, it would be challenging to find anything else so concise that says so much about the past century as the tables below.
The four bar charts show the countries that usually win the largest share of medals — the United States, China, Russia and Germany — and how
