Olympics, selection bias, and nationalism

One of the things you notice about the Olympics once you've watched coverage in a foreign country is the "selection bias." No matter what country you're in, they always focus on their own athletes and the events they compete in.

It can lead you to think the only things that are important are the things you're already seeing. Anything that you don't see, therefore, isn't important.

I noticed it when I was in South Korea back in 2004, and it's just as obvious now, being here in Japan. For example, Korea's "must win" events are archery and taekwondo, so they always dedicate coverage for those events. Japan is big on baseball and judo -- my Japanese coworkers are watching it on TV right now, even though none of us completely understands the rules.

The U.S., for its part, focuses on basketball, swimming, and whatever track events we're currently good at. We always see coverage of those events. Conversely, we hardly ever footage of events like handball, and I'd bet most Americans don't even realize it's an actual thing. (If it weren't for high school gym class, I wouldn't either). [Source]

As a country with one of the largest contingents in the Games, there's always some American competing in some event somewhere that can has an amazing background story (e.g. Alexis Sablone, a skateboarder with a master's degree from MIT). [Source]

I suppose it's only natural that we focus on those things, but now that I realize now I'm probably missing out on, maybe, 90% of the world's Olympic "good news" stories because of selection bias, I'm less enthusiastic about watching them on TV. (The picture above is of gold medalist Abe Hifumi, whose sister Shi won a gold medal on the same day.) [Source]

Learning about the world's different sports is what's fun for me. I can do without the nationalism.