Category: mapping

There aren’t many things freezing winters and sweaty summers have in common. But what the two seasons do share—at least every four years—are the Olympic Games. Every alternating two years in a four-year period, the world comes together to watch thousands of top athletes participate in summer and winter sports.

Athletes from 200 participating nations train nearly all their lives in an effort to make it to the Olympics. Therefore, compensation for a win, which not only is a feat for the athlete but the country they represent, is part of any athlete’s consideration. So how much do countries pay for Olympic medals? It depends and can range from $0 to over half a million. The map below can be sorted by paydays for gold, silver, and bronze medals to answer if Olympians get paid—and what that number is in each country?

View How Much Olympic Medalists Are Paid in a full screen map

We pulled the data from Wikipedia’s list of Olympic incentives. Each “incentive” (read: cash) is the 2021 U.S. dollar equivalent. In the story of the Olympics prize money, we’ll be sure to highlight the highest-paid gold medalists and how much silver and bronze medalists score. So let’s get started with how much do Olympians make.

How Much Money is a Gold Medal Worth?

Competing in the Olympics is a great feat unto itself—regardless of placement. But for those with their eye on the ultimate Olympic prize, the million-dollar question becomes: what’s the ​​prize money for Olympic gold medal? Let’s check out the answer.

• Singapore – $737,000 per gold medal
• Taiwan – $720,000
• Hong Kong – $642,500
• Thailand – $365,150
• Indonesia – $346,000
• Kazakhstan – $250,000
• Malaysia – $236,000
• Azerbaijan – $235,000
• Morocco – $225,067
• Italy – $213,000

When you’re going for gold, Singapore is the country to represent. Top medalists from Singapore make $737,000, more than any country in the world. In fact, many countries in Asia pay their winning athletes large sums. Eight of the 10 highest-paying countries are located in Asia.

More specifically, Southeastern Asian countries like Singapore, of course, and Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, give generous paydays for taking home Olympic gold. Additionally, both the Eastern Asian countries of Taiwan and Hong Kong are noted above for their over half a million-dollar reward for gold. But how do these countries stack up when it comes to their payments for silver and bronze?

Silver Medalists Score $369,000

Silver winners look pretty similar to the gold list above, with some key differences.

Country	Gold	Gold rank	Silver	Silver rank
Singapore	$737,000	1	$369,000	1
Hong Kong	$642,500	3	$321,250	2
Taiwan	$720,000	2	$251,000	3
Thailand	$365,150	4	$219,090	4
Kazakhstan	$250,000	6	$150,000	5
Morocco	$225,067	9	$140,667	6
Indonesia	$346,000	5	$138,500	7
Hungary	$168,000	12	$126,000	8
Azerbaijan	$235,000	8	$117,500	9
Italy	$213,000	10	$107,000	10

It’s no surprise Singapore remains #1 when it comes to ​​Olympic prize money for silver. Singaporean silver medalists receive more money than most gold winners from other countries. Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, and Morocco rise in ranks while Taiwan, Indonesia, and Azerbaijan fall. And Hungary, who didn’t even make it into the top 10 in gold, appears in 8th place when it comes to silver. To browse bronze, sort the map by the third-place medal.

Total Payouts

Now a one-time payout of, say Hong Kong’s $642,500 for a gold medal seems to be a reasonable payment for an athlete’s hours upon hours in a gym. But most countries have multiple athletes placing in a variety of sports. So it begs the question, how much did the top winning countries like the U.S., Japan, and Great Britain pay their medalists in total just in the 2020 Summer Olympics?

The U.S. paid nearly 1.5 million dollars to its gold medalists in the 2020 Summer Olympics alone. And altogether, Team USA shelled out exactly ​​$2.88 million to gold, silver, and bronze winners. Next, Japan doled out $1.62 million in total. While the U.K., which doesn’t award money for medals, its flat $38,339 annual stipend per athlete means it spent $2,492,035 during the same Olympics.

Explore the Map with Multi-Column Grouping for Gold, Silver & Bronze

Let’s take a moment to applaud the Olympic medalists and the countries that pay them well for their efforts. And now, we can appreciate that we can explore insights in your map with multi-column grouping.

When it comes to data, you often find yourself with more than just location information. In our case: gold, silver, and bronze payouts.

With BatchGeo, you can filter by the multiple columns of your additional spreadsheet data at the same time, as depicted below.

This way, you see only what you want, such as the top-paying countries for each of the three medals—all at once. Learn more about how to explore insights in your map with multi-column grouping or get started yourself at batchgeo.com.

Being fit is about more than lifting weights and cardio. After all, it’s often said that abs are made in the kitchen. But experts report you don’t have to ditch your favorite foods to qualify as fit. Incorporating some fruits and veggies daily, getting enough sleep, and walking to work can be enough. Another potential factor? Where you live! That’s why we mapped the healthiest cities in America and looked for location trends. We’ve also included the habits experts recommend along with each city to explore in the map below.

View America’s Fittest Cities in a full screen map

We pulled the map’s data about the health behaviors of the U.S.’s 100 largest cities from American College of Sports Medicine’s Fitness Index. They identified a population’s tendency towards things like exercising in the last 30 days and consuming 2+ fruits per day and totaled them up to create an overall fit score for each city. So, in the story of the most health-conscious cities, we’ll cover the top 10 overall fittest, regional fitness, along with the top in each fitness category.

Top 10 Overall Fittest Cities in America

Of the 100 most fit cities on the map, 10 are closest to a perfect score of 100 overall when it comes to being fit among a variety of categories. Interestingly enough, two of the 10 are located in the same Midwestern state, though neither ranks #1. Let’s cycle through these top ten.

All About Arlington

1. Arlington, VA – 86.1
2. Minneapolis, MN – 80.6
3. Seattle, WA – 77.6
4. Denver, CO – 75.8
5. Madison, WI – 75
6. Washington D.C. – 73.8
7. St. Paul, MN – 70.4
8. Irvine, CA, – 70.3
9. Portland, OR – 69.2
10. Atlanta, GA – 69

It’s official: Arlington, Virginia is the fittest city in America. They can’t all be in the FBI, with its stringent physical requirements. With an overall score that’s 5.5 points higher than even the second-fittest, the 236,842 residents of Arlington certainly are healthy. Special acknowledgment to the specific categories the city excels at, including high scores in % exercising in the last 30 days, making it one of the ​​most active cities in the U.S.—government work must require stress relief. Arlington’s population has a high % in excellent or very good health and the lowest scores in:

• % smoking
• % physical health not good during the past 30 days
• % with high blood pressure
• % with angina or coronary heart disease
• % with diabetes
• % with food insecurity

All that said, let’s move on to the rest of the top 10.

Fit Minnesota & PNW Cities

Both Minneapolis and nearby St. Paul, Minnesota, score high among the most health-conscious cities, along with the Pacific Northwest’s neighboring cities of Seattle and Portland.

Not one of these four cities tops the charts for an individual health behavior, though Minneapolis outranks all other cities in Bike Score (not included on this map, but noted in The 484 Best & Worst Cities for Cycling). St. Paul also has the most baseball diamonds per 10,000 residents. Go Twins?

Additionally, Oakland, California narrowly missed the cutoff at #11 with an overall score of 67.4. However, Irvine did make the list and the city also tops the charts in aerobic and strength activity guidelines, as well as pedestrian fatality rate.

With an idea of the top overall healthiest cities in America, let’s show other cities some attention.

Other Cities Meeting Their Fitness Goals

Obviously, not every city can make it to the top 10 overall fittest. But of the rest of the 90 healthiest cities in America, several surpassed all the others in select categories. Their exemplary efforts deserve to be noted—at least for the nine health behavior subcategories that are included on the map.

Health Behavior	Top Scoring City	Score
% exercising in the last 30 days	Arlington, VA	85.7
% meeting aerobic activity guidelines	St. Petersburg, FL	65.4
% meeting aerobic & strength activity guidelines	Anaheim, Irvine, & Santa Ana, CA	31
% bicycling or walking to work	Boston, MA	19.3
% using public transportation to work	New York, NY	55.6
% consuming 2+ fruits/ day	Newark, NJ	41.7
% consuming 3+ vegetables/ day	San Antonio, TX	20.9
% sleeping 7+ hours/ day	Lubbock, TX	77.8
% smoking	Arlington, VA	3.5

While we previously noted Arlington’s achievements in health, ​​St. Petersburg, Florida, is a new city to highlight, as you can see on the table above. Also worth mentioning: St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota follow St. Petersburg with a high percentage of their populations meeting aerobic activity guidelines, with scores of 59 and 58.9, respectively.

And then there are the three Golden State cities that are the best in the country at meeting aerobic & strength activity guidelines: Anaheim, Irvine, and Santa Ana, along with two Texan places outranking all others in two different categories: San Antonio via vegetable consumption and Lubbock with sleep.

Meanwhile, Boston is home to the highest percentage of people biking or walking to work—it must be one of the Most Walkable Cities in the US, Canada, and Australia.

On the other hand, the Big Apple has the most residents taking public transportation to work. Read more about the 370 Cities & Their Commute Times and Transportation Rates here.

As a company dedicated to making interactive maps from spreadsheets, we talk a lot about Excel. First released in the 1980s, it was one of the first popular spreadsheet tools on the market. It also now seems to be the industry standard.

But when Google Sheets came to town in 2006, it rose in popularity, so much so that you now have converts to the program who swear they’ll never open Excel again. Where do we fall on the topic? We’re fans of anything that will hold our location data. But, since we already looked at Excel tips from the guy who built it, let’s go over three reasons Google’s option is supreme when we compare Google Sheets vs Excel.

1. Collaborate In Real-Time with Google Sheets

Let’s start off with what is perhaps the top reason that, when it comes to Microsoft Excel vs Google Sheets, Sheets reigns supreme: collaboration. Be it co-workers teaming up on a project or a chore chart between spouses, Google Sheets has always made it easy (and free!) for multiple users to edit a sheet at the same time.

On the other hand, Excel’s desktop version just recently began offering real-time collaboration to its paying customers, though each spreadsheet must be stored in OneDrive or SharePoint in Microsoft 365. Previously, users had to manually save, download, and email each updated version back and forth to one another, which continues to be the case for files not stored in Microsoft’s preferred manner. As for Excel’s less well-known cloud version, it may be comparable to Google Sheets’ collaboration capabilities.

In Sheets, simply share any spreadsheet stored anywhere with your desired collaborators to work on it together, seeing each other’s changes right as you make them. Not to mention you can live chat with users currently working on the spreadsheet with you, making communication much more efficient than a string of emails. And to keep track of who has edited what, Google Sheets once again has the only clean solution.

2. Sheet’s Version History Further Encourages Collaboration

Google Sheets also aids collaboration with their built-in Version history.

While Excel has a similar option to view previous versions of a file, according to Microsoft, version history only works for files stored in OneDrive or SharePoint in Microsoft 365.

But with Google Sheets, you don’t have to do anything to ensure your Version history is generated—it’s automatic. This allows you and your collaborators to track your progress without any setup. Get started with Sheets’ Version history via the keyboard shortcut Command + Option + Shift + H or by navigating to File, Version history, See version history—or even name the current version.

But this isn’t even the last benefit of Google Sheets vs Excel. Let’s move on to reason #3.

3. Access from All Your Devices

Yet another reason Google Sheets comes out on top is how easy it is to access your data at any time on any device, which, in a way, is collaborating with yourself. In Excel, you can only access spreadsheets that are on your computer. Whereas Google Sheets allows you to access your spreadsheets on multiple devices (even at the same time).

Whether it’s your phone, iPad, library computer, or boss’s laptop, this is the benefit of a 100% browser-based spreadsheet tool. Simply log in to your Google account on your desired device to have every sheet you’ve ever created in Sheets available wherever you are.

And when you’re done? Log out to prevent anyone else from accessing your information. Or, if it’s your device, you can remain logged in for easy access in the future.

With an idea of how collaborating is better in Google Sheets vs Excel, we can move on to another way of sharing our work.

Continue the Collab with Shared Maps

In the question of which is better, Google Sheets vs Excel, the evidence seems to show collaboration is best in Google Sheets. But don’t let that stop with your spreadsheets. In the same spirit, continue collaborating when you map your location data with BatchGeo.

View Most Common City Names in a full screen map

Share your interactive creation with friends and fans on social media or, you can also share your map with an even wider audience by copying and pasting to embed it into your website.