Charlotte MacDonald
speaker
1,889 appearances
62 recordings
1 series
first heard Sep 2010
last heard Apr 2025
Charlotte MacDonald’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Yes, you might think the obvious explanation is that African leaders are older than those of other continents, but that's not really the case.
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The average age of an African leader is 61, but that's the same as Asia.
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South American leaders are younger, they're 59 on average, while Europeans are 55.
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But were the leaders who have died older than average?
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Yes, their average was 67, but another thing to consider is life expectancy, which among the general population is lower in Africa...
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than in places like Europe, Latin America and Asia.
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Dr George Leeson, a gerontologist from Oxford University in the UK, says a poor childhood can have a lasting impact.
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The stereotypical African leader clings on to power until he drops.
Well, Simon Allison isn't sure the facts fit that explanation.
Of course, all this might be statistically meaningless, a blip if you like, but Simon says that whatever's really going on, it creates uncertainty.
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Well, this is a thought experiment we set ourselves.
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If you adjust for the fact that some countries are richer than others and some have more people in them, can we work out what we think the final medal tally should look like based on only those factors?
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Professor Megan Bussey from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in the US explains why this is useful.
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Now, we asked Megan to help us create benchmarks for what we expect a country to get.
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Then armed with this table of predictions, we were able to compare them with a 2012 medal table to see which countries punched above or below their weight.
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Well, one group are the small countries or low-income countries that have disproportionate depth in track and field sports, for which there are lots of medals available, including Jamaica, who got 12, but also Kenya and Ethiopia.
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But on the basis of population and GDP alone, Meghan would expect them to get none.
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There are also reasonably wealthy countries with small populations that overachieve, perhaps because they have a strong sporting tradition like New Zealand.
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But some of the biggest overachievers were those at the top of the medal table.
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China and the US got around twice as many medals as Meghan's table suggested they should.
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Showing 1221–1240 of 1,889 · page 62 of 95
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