Olympic Medals Cartogram

The size of each country’s circle represents how many medals they were awarded for that particular year. Scroll back through each summer games to see how countries fared over time. Click the “by ranking” tab to sort the countries into a list.

The graphic was created using a force-directed graph using a particle system. Countries try to locate themselves near where they are geographically located as well as close to geographically neighboring countries. The circles do not overlap. Flash is a bit too slow to be interactive, so there is a pre-render on our side to determine how each year’s layout will appear.

Medals Cartogram

Reader Replies

  1. Aug 20th, 2008
    8:40 pm

    hi lee its will I just wanted to say hi and ask you some questions because my mom was talking to me about making a website

  2. Aug 20th, 2008
    8:55 pm

    hi lee I just set up an ichat account so i dont know how but reply to me somehow and tell me how we talk love will

  3. Aug 31st, 2008
    2:37 am

    Hi Lee,
    I saw this, and the Olympic torches graphic, on the NYTimes and liked them both. Didn’t know you had done. Nice job!

  4. Sep 20th, 2008
    4:17 pm

    Can you tell us what software / programs where used to create this Cartogram?

  5. Sep 20th, 2008
    6:55 pm

    sure! The cartogram was build using adobe flash. The layout algorithm is written in actionscript. It uses a soft body force directed graph layout method.

  6. Sep 25th, 2008
    12:54 pm

    Thanks - Hopefully this will get incorporated into a more affordable and easy to use open source program soon, maybe OpenOffice.Org. Thanks again.

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