This graphic will compare the weight of the Olympic athletes, who are supposed to be designed to be in the best physical condition out of literally everyone in the country they ares representing. It will be interesting to see the comparisons between the average weight compared to height, age, sex, and sport, of athletes from countries around the world.

MAIN HEADER: Comparison of Weight, Height, Age, and Sex of Olympic Athletes and How It Represents the Country They Are Representing

SUB: These athletes are designed to be in the peak physical fitness, but how do the best human bodies compare across countries?

Main Header: Which countries produce the oldest Olympic athletes?

Sub Head: To see an elderly athlete competing at a high level is a rare sight, but five different countries had more than three represetatives of a least 50 years of age. The United States,  Australia, Belgium and Great Britain all had four competitors that exceeded the half-century mark while New Zealand had three. Japan, however, sported the oldest athlete, a 71-year-old male equestrian rider.

69 individuals competed in the equestrian individual jumping event. Just 13 of these individuals were women. Four were from the USA or Canada, six from European countries, one from Australia, one from Japan, and one from Bermuda. I surmise that participation in the equestrian event requires a high income, and the data would suggest this hypothesis is correct. The age range for females in the individual jumping competition is 18 to 49 with the average age being 35.

Summer 2012 Olympics – medals won by team/country/event across multiple teams/countries

This graphic, which takes up multiple boxes across the bottom third of my storyboard, would allow users to view medal counts by the team selected in the upper 2/3 of the piece. Additional analytical functionality could be baked into the system by allowing semi-transparent graphical overlays to display multiple teams’/countries’ medal counts.

The number of minors in the Summer 2012 ranges from each country. The youngest athlete was 13 and from Togo. The highest number of minorities came from China. There were 7 14 year olds, 26 15 year olds, 66 16 year olds, and 114 17 year olds from all around the world.

Today, we will doing our first real reporting assignment. It will be due by Wednesday at 11:59 p.m.

Background: On Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services released the February Enrollment Report for the heath insurance marketplace. The health insurance marketplace was mandated by the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. The marketplace has been one of the most controversial topics in recent political memory. The constitutionality of the individual mandate was challenged, which resulted in a ruling by the United State Supreme Court. When the insurance marketplace launched on October 1, it was tragically flawed, resulting in individuals not being able to effectively navigate the website. Since then the Obama administration has made many changes to HealthCare.gov.

Assignment: You have been assigned by the KnoxNews to write an article about enrollment rates for the insurance marketplace. Needless to say, it is for the KnoxNews, so would like the focus of the article to be enrollment in Tennessee. With that said, they would like you to provide context by discussing national enrollment trends and comparing Tennessee to other similar states. You have been budgeted 10 column inches (or about 350 to 400 words), along with room for one information graphic. Please submit your story and a storyboard for your graphic (this can be anything from a hand drawn sketch to a quick excel chart) to the course website before 11:59 p.m. Wednesday.

Resources: You are allowed to report this story in any way you would like (i.e., any sources, any information), except please don’t look up stories that have reported on the February numbers already.

Here are some base resources to help you start reporting this story:

Government Reports 

• February Enrollment Report
• January Enrollment Report
• December Enrollment Report
• November (initial) Enrollment Report

Dealing with PDF’s 

• Cometdocs – If you use this, I would suggest only sending them the page or two from which you need data (instead of sending the whole doc).
• Tabula – This is a new and slightly more complex way to pull the data in to a CSV, but overall I think it is better. See the readme at the bottom of the page for installation instructions. Don’t get freaked out. It is easier than it looks.

MAIN HED: Does the fountain of youth play a part in Olympic success?

SUBHED: It’s an age old question, literally: Does being younger automatically make one more likely to win an Olympic medal? With age comes experience, but data indicates the average age for each medal winner in the 2012 London Olympics was 25.7. While a few outliers skewed the numbers (gymnastics: 20.8, Equestrian: 37.9), overall most winners fall somewhere along the younger lines, meaning a dip into the fountain of youth may be a county’s best bet for Olympic prosperity.

Is there a relationship between home country and Olympic weightlifting medals? Between the U.S. military and Austria’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, it would be easy to assume that the United States and Eastern European countries thrive under the iron. But the results from the 2012 games tell a slightly different story.

The U.S. failed to bring home any weightlifting medals. Eastern European countries won more than a handful, but the women outperformed the men when it came to results on a global scale. In the end, Eastern European women and Eastern Asian men were the most likely to hold the podium.

Metals won by male and female swimmers and divers. 

In the 2012 London Olympic games, 68 metals were won by female swimmers, and 134 metals were won by male swimmers. In the diving competition, 12 metals were won by females and 11 by males.