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Who won the 2008 Olympics? A multicriteria decision of measuring intangibles

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Abstract

It often happens that at the end of Olympics games the medals won by more than one country are many and close in total number as in the 2008 games where China won 100 medals with many gold ones and the United States won 110 medals but with a lesser number of gold medals. The question is: Although it is often done arbitrarily, is there a way to quantify the values of gold, silver and bronze medals legitimately to resolve this concern? This short exposition shows that there is by using the author’s theory for the measurement of intangibles, the Analytic Hierarchy Process.

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References

  1. Bernard, A.B. & Busse, M.R. (2000). Who wins the Olympic Games: economic development and medal total. NBER Working Paper No. 7998, Issued in November, 2000

  2. Bialek, C. (2008). Who won the Olympics medal count? Let me count the ways. Available via DIALOG. http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/?s=olympi cs&x=13&y=10&paged=2. Cited August 25, 2008

  3. Forsyth, S. (2008). China 2008 Olympic medal tally by population, and China 2008 Olympic medal tally by gross domestic product (GDP). Available via DIALOG. http://simon.forsyth.net/olympics.html

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Correspondence to Thomas L. Saaty.

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Saaty, T.L. Who won the 2008 Olympics? A multicriteria decision of measuring intangibles. J. Syst. Sci. Syst. Eng. 17, 473–486 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11518-008-5092-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11518-008-5092-8

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