5.2 Major Findings

Our visualizations demonstrated that: - Both the total number of participating athletes and the percentage of female athletes in the Olympics has been increasing. Female participation started from 0% in Athens 1896 to 45% in Rio 2016.

• However, this growth in the rate of participation of women varies across continents. The rate in Africa has always been lower than the global average except for during the 1930s. The rate in Asia and South America had also been always lower than the global average but caught up during the 1980s and 2000s, respectively. The rate in Europe, North America and Oceania has always been the same as or higher than the global mean.

• A country is more likely to have a higher degree of medal share when it hosts the Olympics. In other words, home-field advantage does seem to exist in the Olympics.

• Among today’s countries and regions, the United States of America has the highest medal efficiency, 0.91. This means that on average, every American athlete almost earned a Bronze medal in the past Olympic Games. Medal efficiency for Russia, China, Pakistan, India, Germany, and Australia is also very high. We also found that medal efficiency had a high correlation with countries’ economic development.

• Athletics, gymnastics, swimming, shooting and football are among the sports with the highest number of participating athletes. This might be because these sports have greater shares of total medals. It might also because there are many sub-categories within them.