Huh?
Example. China wins 22 golds, the US wins 5, Brazil wins 3, Russia wins 2. China wins on a per capita basis.
If every country pulled their weight (and we assume fractional gold medals), China would be doing well if it wins above 20% of the medal count, at, say, 7 gold medals.
Trouble is, countries like Australia are doing better than they are with a single gold out of 32. On a per capita basis, they shouldn't have won any. With one, they are performing incredibly well. So well that China can't do better.
"Requiring 20% of the world to win 100% of the gold to score as top is bungled math."
Yep. It is. But that math isn't mine.
Even so, China should win more than 59 golds to Australia's one to do better than Australia. They are a much larger country.
Per capita works pretty well if you are measuring how well a country has done while removing the size of the country as a variable.
Fact is, small countries often perform better on a per capita basis than the larger ones.
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