Case Study: Performance Analysis throughout the History in Summer and Winter Olympics

Abstract

The Olympics is the world’s foremost multisport international event that occurs every four years in 2 seasonal editions which are the Summer and Winter Olympics respectively. With more than 200 nations participating in hundreds of events, it is a matter of prestige for any nation and the dream of every sportsperson to win a medal in the Olympics. Despite the massive hard work of the sportspersons, many nations fail to win medals whereas some nations are able to grab most of the medals under the names of their nations. Therefore, an analysis of the history of the Olympics is needed to understand the performances of nations, athletes and events to observe certain patterns occurring throughout the history of Olympics, in order to help the nations to improve themselves. The primary objective of this paper is to analyze the historical data of both the Winter and Summer Olympics under 14 different factors using Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) techniques and statistical methods to evaluate the performance of nations and athletes as well as the historical evolution of Olympics and correlation of medal win of sports persons with external variables such as GDP and population. The analyses provide accurate insights of the performance of nations in the Olympics throughout history and help sportspersons to analyze their own and the competitor’s performances. In this paper, the data visualization aspect of EDA is used to provide a statistical view of factors that led to the evolution of the Olympic games as well as the performance of nations and sportspersons and helps countries with average and poor performances to improve themselves in upcoming Olympic editions.