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The Olympics Mystery Explained!!!

2024-08-19 · explainer · Hank · 3:59 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Sports · mode: Explainer · tags: timely hook, self correction

Following up his Olympics mystery video, Hank reports that viewers pointed out judo and other sports award two bronze medals per event; normalizing the medal counts on camera, he finds continental Europe's excess of bronze disappears, explained by mathematics rather than culture.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Viewers solved the mystery; Hank had tweeted about it without answers, but a video got people engaged

  • ★★ Hank says he had tweeted about the pattern hoping someone would explain it and no one did; once he made a video, people immediately pointed out the answer. — 00:00:00 · Twitter
  • ★ Hank says people on Twitter aren't paying much attention, while a video makes people more engaged and connected to the content. (playful) — 00:00:00 · Twitter

00:00:29 — Judo and the sports that award two bronze medals per event

  • ★★★ After viewers told him he forgot judo, Hank explains that several sports award two bronze medals per event, so every Games awards more bronze than gold or silver. — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ Hank proposes that Europe's excess of bronze medals may simply be due to more bronze medals being awarded. (hedged) — 00:00:29 · Europe

00:00:58 — Hank fumbles through normalizing the medal data in a spreadsheet, with a later pop-in explaining the method

  • ★★ Hank enters the medals awarded, 329 gold, 330 silver and 385 bronze, saying he doesn't know why there was one more silver than gold. — 00:00:58
  • ★ Struggling with the spreadsheet formula, Hank says he has forgotten all of his statistics knowledge and is just pounding through it. (playful) — 00:01:27
  • ★★ In an added pop-in, Hank explains his method: for each medal type, Europe's medals won per medal of that type available, normalizing to the total medals available. — 00:01:50 · Europe

00:02:43 — The Europe effect disappears in the normalized chart, though China's does not

  • ★★★ Charting the normalized data, Hank finds the Europe effect simply goes away, with no statistical significance in the graph. — 00:02:43 · Europe
  • ★★ Hank notes that normalizing does not make China's medal effect go away. — 00:02:43 · China

00:03:24 — Preempting objections, a mathematical not cultural explanation, thanks to viewers and sign-off

  • ★★ Preempting the objection that he normalized every year to one year's medal counts, Hank says he looked it up: the proportion has been roughly the same since 2004. — 00:03:24
  • ★★★ Hank says he never claimed to know why the effect existed, only that it existed; it is explained by a mathematical thing, not a cultural human thing. — 00:03:24 · Europe
  • ★★ Hank concludes it is nice to get a solid answer: continental Europe probably gets more bronze medals almost entirely because more bronze medals are available. (hedged) — 00:03:24 · Europe

In the description and comments

  • ★ Replying to a viewer comment calling the video delightful, a channel comment suggests subscribing to Hankschannel. — creator comment · hankschannel

Humor (significant)

  • Hank describes how he tries to explain the world with familiar anchors like income — 00:00:00

    “I'm gonna try to explain this with my big monkey brain”

  • Lost in the spreadsheet formula, Hank cycles through wrong attempts — 00:01:50

    “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.”

  • The normalized chart shows his Europe mystery vanishing — 00:02:43

    “Should I take the video down?”

  • Hank declares the graph statistically insignificant without any test — 00:02:43

    “I can tell by looking at it.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Europe · Olympic Games

Also: China · Google Sheets · Judo · statistics · Twitter

Only in the description or credits: hankschannel

Also centred on Olympic Games: I Don't Understand My Life · Happy Third Chocolate Day! · 16 Sports that Should Be in the Olympics · I Have Uncovered an Olympics Mystery…

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