With the Olympic Games starting now, I feel like it is time for me to make my predictions for the final medal tally. It seems like everyone else is doing it. I have discussed a few prediction models on this site that use science and results from recent competitions. My prediction is based on something a little less scientific, my gut feeling and reflection, so don’t place too much emphasis on it. It will be interesting to see how my list performs compared to the other predictions, only time and a bit of number crunching will tell.
Here is my final top 10 predictions for gold medals won:
- 40 USA
- 33 China
- 26 Great Britain
- 24 Russia
- 15 Germany
- 11 Japan
- 10 Australia
- 10 Italy
- 9 France
- 8 South Korea
UPDATE: Now that the Olympics are over, it is time to score how well my predictions were. I got the first four in order. The only country I did not predict to make the top 10 was Hungary, which finished 9th on the official table with 8 golds, pushing Japan outside the top 10. How accurate were these predictions? Using my analysis method comparing the top five actual to the predicted medals for those countries, I achieved an percentage accuracy score of 85%, only just below the best by Goldman Sachs (87%), out of all the medal predictions for 2012.
| my order prediction | predicted medals | actual position | actual golds | |
| 1 | USA | 40 | 1 | 46 |
| 2 | China | 33 | 2 | 38 |
| 3 | Great Britain | 26 | 3 | 29 |
| 4 | Russia | 24 | 4 | 24 |
| 5 | Germany | 15 | 6 | 11 |
| 6 | Japan | 11 | 11 | 7 |
| 7 | Australia | 10 | 10 | 7 |
| 8 | Italy | 10 | 8 | 8 |
| 9 | France | 9 | 7 | 11 |
| 10 | South Korea | 8 | 5 | 13 |
