Think it was day before yesterday in The Times of India, New Delhi edition. TOI published an article referring to a company's using statistical tools to predict no of gold medals and total no of medals won by each country in Beijing Olympics.

The report that the model was able to predict with almost 92% success rate for the total no of medals tally and even more successfully it predicted the no of Gold medals which would be won by each country. For ex - the model had predicted 44 Gold medals for China while it eventually won 51.

And all these predictions were based on the inputs like GDP, infrastructure for sports and three more factors. All the five factors were macro economic.

The model did not even consider the individuals participanting in the games.

The model had predicted 1 Gold medal for India. Well, India went on to beat that forecast and added 2 bronze medals to its kitty.

This model follows scientific forecasting technique which we studied in Forecast based planning.