What events should an ambitious nation target as the "easiest" in which to win Olympic medals? How does Olympic success correlate with a nation's GNP? How does the location of the Olympics affect the chance of record breaking? How can simple statistics help us understand the likelihood of winning streaks and the chance that an innocent athlete will fail a drugs test?

John D. Barrow, mathematician, cosmologist, and best-selling author, will explore these question and more in a free public lecture at Gresham College in London tomorrow, 17th January 2012. It's part of a maths and sport series — see the Gresham College website for recordings of past maths and sport lectures and details about upcoming ones.

Tomorrow's talk is at 1pm at the Museum of London, London Wall, London EC2Y 5HN.

For more on mathematics and sport, have a look at the Plus sport package and at our sister site Maths and sport: Countdown to the games.