Students shame sports pundits

Sports pundits might have to brush up on their tips as hundreds of teenagers correctly predicted the number and colours of Irish Olympic medals.

While few of the general public might have forecast the exact success rate of our Olympians this summer, almost 350 second-level students were on the money when it came to predicting our medal tally.

They make up 7% of those who answered a question in a survey for the CSO’s Census at Schools programme. Almost 5,000 of the 7,160 teens who took part completed the final part of the questionnaire.

They were told that Ireland brought back a silver and two bronze medals from the 2008 games in Beijing, and were asked how many medals of each colour Ireland would win at London 2012.

CSO statistician Felix Coleman said 348 respondents correctly predicted the one gold (won by Katie Taylor), our solitary silver (claimed by John Joe Nevin) and the three bronzes, which were taken home from the Games by Cian O’Connor, Paddy Barnes, and Michael Conlon.

Who knows what the odds on that might have been? Well, the Irish Examiner does, having asked bookmaker Paddy Power.

“While we didn’t have prices on the specific breakdown of medals, one of our odds compilers worked it out retro-spectively. We’d have been happy to quote 50/1 on Ireland coming away with one gold, one silver, and three bronze before the games began,” said a spokesman.

The exercise is part of the CSO’s support for the statistics strand of the new Project Maths syllabus in second-level schools.