Olympic Rowing Medals Between 1900 and 2022 - Summary Statistics

distribution and skewness
outlier detection
summary statistics
confounding variable
The total number of medals and the weighted points for nations competing in rowing events in the Summer Olympic Games between 1900 and 2022.
Authors
Affiliation

Abigail Smith

St. Lawrence University

Ivan Ramler

St. Lawrence University

Robin Lock

St. Lawrence University

Published

June 5, 2025

Introduction to Rowing

If you are unfamiliar with the sport of rowing, we encourage you to watch the following video from World Rowing

Introduction to Module

This activity looks at the total number of medals and points for nations in Olympic rowing between 1900 and 2022.

The Summer Olympic Games are an international athletics event held every four years and hosted in different countries around the world. Rowing was added to the Olympics in 1896 and has been in every Summer Olympics since. Rowing races in the Olympic context are typically regatta style, meaning that there are multiple boats racing head-to-head against each other in multiple lanes. Since 1912, the standard distance for Olympic regattas has been 2000m. The boat that is first to cross the finish line is awarded a gold medal, the second a silver medal, and the third a bronze. Over the course of its time as an Olympic sport there have been 25 different event entries.

In this dataset, the medals are counted as one medal towards each boat as opposed to each athlete in the boat. In looking at the total medals and total points for each nation, it is interesting to see which nations dominate in Olympic rowing. Additionally, looking at the overall distribution of the medals for all countries provides insight on just how lob-sided medaling can be in rowing at the Olympic level.

This activity could be used as an example or a short take home assessment.

By the end of the activity, students will be able to:

  1. Assess and interpret data distribution using histograms
  2. Obtain summary statistics with with statistical software
  3. Identify outliers with IQR

Students will use an understanding of histograms and summary statistics to assess data distribution. Students will also use the IQR method to identify outliers.

The non tech version of the worksheet will only require a calculator, but the tech version will require the use of basic statistical software.

Data

In the data set there are 41 medalling nations that competed in 25 different events. Each row represents a nation and their medals and points which are cumulative from all rowing Olympics between 1900 and 2022. In total, there are 41 rows with 3 variables. In the original dataset, there were 101 nations in rowing, but the data has been adjusted to include only nations that medalled.

Download data:

rowing_medals.csv

Variable Descriptions
Variable Description
NOC National Olympic Committee or the nation competing.
medals The total number of medals for that country in that event.
points The total number of points for that country in that event. The points are scaled with a gold medal counting for 3 points, a silver for 2, and a bronze for 1.
gold The total number of gold medals for that country.
silver The total number of silver medals for that country.
bronze The total number of bronze medals for that country.

Data Source

Original Kaggle Dataset - 120-years-of-olympic-history-athletes-and-results

Materials

We provide editable MS Word handouts that don’t require additional technology. We also provide editable worksheets that require the use of R (MS Word and Quarto format). Solutions are provided for all versions.

No Tech Required

Tech Required

MS Word Documents - solutions written in R, but any software will suffice.

Quarto Documents - assumes students will use R

This Olympic rowing medals worksheet builds students’ understanding of data distribution through histograms, summary statistics, and outliers. It also strengthens students’ ability to critically evaluate confounding variables and devising relationships amongst variables through looking at barplots. Additionally, it provides an interesting opportunity for students to look at patterns in medals for Olympic rowing.

How to Cite

If you use this module in your work, please cite it as follows:

Smith, A., Ramler, I., & Lock, R. (2025, June 12). Olympic Rowing - Summary Statistics. “The SCORE Network.” https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/6YGJV

You can include this citation directly in your references or bibliography.