I have noticed that some people in Japan have been disappointed by their level of success in the most recent olympics held in China. However I have a feeling that Japan has done better than most people realize. To prove this point I argue that the number of medals a country earns is proportional to the number of people they have in their country, because it creates a greater chance for an athlete from that country to enter the olympics. In other words, the more people you have, the more competition, the better the athlete, the higher chance your country will win a medal in the olympics.

So for this experiment I have decided to make a list of the top 20 countries based on medal winnings. Bronze is worth 1 point, silver 2, and gold 3. We will add up a total medals-score and divide it by the current (rough) estimate of the country's population to get a medals per person ratio. Then we will compare the results. However I think it is worth noting that an athlete from a country with a significantly low population, say for example just 1,000 people (granted an extreme case) would have no one to compete against during training. So for that athlete to go to the olympics and receive a medal is, I believe, an even greater feat due to the incredibly high levels of self motivation and determination that athlete would have to possess in order to compete at such a level. It would be interesting to make some type of exponential function based on medals per person to determine which athlete "worked the hardest" but I can't even begin to consider what the shape of that function might look like and so I won't be doing that. Furthermore athletes train for a very long time, basically their entire lives and experiences would differ greatly, say for example the team's coach's father-in-law was stabbed to death just hours after the opening to the summer games, such is the case with the U.S. men's volleyball team, that would make focusing on your practice that much more difficult. Nevertheless that team went on to win a gold medal, some may argue that emotionally they 'worked harder' than some other team which didn't have to deal with such an emotional and unfortunate experience.

In any case here it is, the top 20 countries (based on medal count) broken down to include medals per person.

Country	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Population	Medals Score	Score / person
United States	36	38	36	301,139,947	220	1,368,818
China	51	21	28	1,321,851,888	223	5,927,587
Russia	23	21	28	141,377,752	139	1,017,106
Great Britain	19	13	15	60,776,238	98	620,166
Australia	14	15	17	20,434,176	89	229,597
Germany	16	10	15	82,400,996	83	992,783
France	7	19	17	*64,473,140	76	848,331
South Korea	13	10	8	49,044,790	67	732,012
Italy	8	10	10	58,147,733	54	1,076,810
Ukraine	7	5	15	46,299,862	46	1,006,519
Japan	9	6	10	127,433,494	49	2,600,684
Cuba	2	11	11	11,394,043	39	292,155
Belarus	4	5	10	9,724,723	32	303,898
Spain	5	10	3	40,448,191	38	1,064,426
Canada	3	9	6	33,390,141	33	1,011,822
Netherlands	7	5	4	16,570,613	25	662,825
Brazil	3	4	8	*187,543,000	25	7,501,720
Kenya	5	5	4	*34,707,817	29	1,196,821
Kazakhstan	2	4	7	15,284,929	21	727,854
Jamaica	6	3	2	2,780,132	26	106,928