The numbers of gold medals won at the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008 can be modelled by a modified version of Zipf's "law". Arrange countries in descending order by numbers of gold medals won, Where x = rank and y = number of gold medals, then y = 65.3x^(-0.5)+[0.11x-13.6] with R-square = 99.5% and standard deviation = 0.8.
The numbers of gold medals won at the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008 can be modelled by a modified version of Zipf's "law". Arrange countries in descending order by numbers of gold medals won, Where x = rank and y = number of gold medals, then y = 65.3x^(-0.5)+[0.11x-13.6] with R-square = 99.5% and standard deviation = 0.8.