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Today I’ve been playing with Google Spreadsheets’ Heat Map gadget and the Olympic Gold Medal table. For the tables below I looked at the 15 countries with the most gold medals in this Olympics as of 11am GMT today.
The first heat map is based on the number of golds won by each country:
As you can see when you look purely at the number of gold medals won by each country China and the USA are a long way ahead of the rest of the field.
However things change very quickly when you look at the number of gold medals divided by a country’s population.
This heat map is based on the number of gold medals divided by the country’s population:
When you look at gold medals as a percentage of population China suddenly is bottom and the USA 12th of the 15. Slovakia followed by Australia and then Great Britain now head the table.
Finally this heat map is based on the number of gold medals divided by the country’s GDP:
When we look at the gold medals divided by a country’s GDP China jumps up the table again, coming third behind the Ukraine in first place and Romania in second. The USA comes in 12th of of the fifteen countries when you examine the tables in this way.
If Michael Phelps were a country he would currently lie joint sixth in the gold medal table and top the population table. I don’t know Phelps’ GDP but fully support the idea of him becoming a country in his own right.
The data for the gold medals was taken at around 11am GMT 17th August. The population and GDP data was taken from Wikipedia.
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Tags: Map
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With a 3D model it is possible to visualise the impact of sea level change. South London is built on marsh land and is thus more prone to flooding. We have produced a movie that illustrates sea level rise in metres. It clearly picks up the moat around the Tower of London within a metre increase and then follows on to flood most of the Waterloo/South Bank area of London. The movie below does not take into account flood defenses, merely a direct sea level rise.
If we exaggerate the surface model of London in terms of height it shows clearly the reason why South London floods extensively compared to north of the Thames.
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Ok, here’s a new one. Clyde Ford is promoting his new novel, Precious Cargo by using Microsoft Virtual Earth in an online preview of certain pages within book.
The map is used mostly to show places in the “Location Index” using our Bird’s Eye photography (where available) and a high resolution ortho photos (split screen). Now, once you go to the location index and click on a location you may be surprised to find out that you’ve just been hijacked into Google Earth. Ugh. Not to worry - just click the “Virtual Earth” link above the map and you’ll be mystically transported back to Virtual Earth.
Easter egg (maybe) - once you get to the site’s homepage, don’t do anything. Well, close the little popup that gives you tips. After a minute or so, Morgan Freeman’s soothing, yet haunting voice reads the description of the book. Sounds creepy….love it. I found that out because I multitask.
“Little did you know, when you read my blog today it would be the last time your life was as it has been. You’ve lived your life in comfort known only to you, but no more. For today, is that last day of your former life and the first day of the new. The ferocity of not knowing if I will be in your life tomorrow could drive you mad; but, this is the way things must be. This is your new life. The choice of me being in it is yours. ” -CP
I live on very eerie yarns or unique tales; ergo, rarely reading innocuous words. Yes, I write lots of stuff. Although, apparently I need a copy editor.
CP
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Beijing Olympics Marathon Route
I am currently watching (well it is on television in the background) the women’s marathon at the Beijing Olympics. A couple of minutes after the start of the marathon I thought it would be interesting to follow the route on Google Maps. Searching the ‘user created content’ on Google Maps for the route I quickly came up trumps with this My Map.
I then thought it would be even better if I could follow the route in the new Google Earth browser plug-in. In theory it should be easy. I should just be able to load the kml into a Beijing Olympics Map that I created of the Google Earth models for Beijing.
So I added a few lines of code to the map and then tested it in a browser. Unfortunately, as a couple of people have commented on this site in the last couple of weeks, there is a discrepancy between the Google Map tiles and the Google satellite imagery for Beijing. Because the kml was built on Google Maps when you run the kml in the Google Earth browser the route is slightly out of kilter. Therefore I had to create my own My Map and redraw the route.
It is now an hour into the marathon and the map is finished. I can now follow the route in the Google Earth browser.
The athletes have an hour head start on me but I think I can catch them up before they reach the finish line. Ready … Go!
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