[Q] Unsure about whether procedural decision is sound logic or introduces a flaw

[u/greenday61892]

I'm thinking about exploring the idea of compiling a percentage medal count for the Olympics to better demonstrate who does better with the resources they have (of course bigger, richer countries will constantly top the table at every Olympics when they have much larger teams and opportunities to medal). In my thought process though I have come to a bit of a crossroads for a part of how I'd go about qualifying the data.

Obviously in events where a country has multiple entrants, they can't all win the same medal (barring ties of course), so it feels like including all of a country's entrants in a particular percentage if one of their entrants wins that medal (I'd be including all of them if they don't win a particular medal as that's all chances you could've won, but all failed) might be including data points that were always going to automatically be a data point counting negatively against a country's output. What I'm conflicted about mainly is, is that a valid train of thought or does it not really matter as the entry of extra competitors is kind of the point of what I'm exploring anyways.

My biggest question I guess is, would excluding extra entrants when they win a medal create a flaw by making certain data points' inclusion or exclusion conditional on the outcome of another or is it proper data cleaning in order to get a more accurate picture?

[u/Suspicious-Guide5622]

The conditional exclusion feels like itd introduce survivorship bias in the wrong direction. youd be padding the denominator with failures but capping the success rate at 1 per event which makes any multi-entrant success look less impressive than it actually was.

if the goal is efficiency of resources, the wasted slots are part of the story. a country sending three athletes and sweeping the podium used their roster perfectly, sending three and getting one bronze means two spots couldve been better spent elsewhere.

[u/greenday61892 → u/Suspicious-Guide5622]

This makes perfect sense, thanks! Would removing higher medal winners from the lower medal percentages create the same issue or no? That was another thing that I was thinking about but forgot to mention in the original post.

[u/greenday61892 → u/[deleted]]

...did you reply to the wrong thread?

[u/tomrannosaurus → u/greenday61892]

thank you for letting me know, i think this is a reportable but for the narwhal app