Redesign A Bar Graph About Costs of Olympic Games (1968-2016)

I. Explaining the old graph

The old graphs talked about the cost of Olympic Games from 1968 to 2016. The source provided
two graphs explained the cost to hold an Olympic game, and every country that held Olympic Game
overturned its budget (Raul, 2016). From the latest Olympic, the Rio Olympic Game was reported
that was the least cost comparing with the former countries, but it still had 50% overrun. (Raul, 2016).
The following two graphs could show all countries costs and the percentage of costs overruns.

Figure 1 Figure 2
(Source: https://howmuch.net/articles/olympic-costs)
About Figure 1 and 2, one is the “Cost of Olympic Games 1968-2016”, the other is the “Cost
Overturns of the Olympic Games 1968-2016” (Raul, 2016, p. 1). They just show each country’s
expense and the percentage of the costs overturns when a country held an Olympic game. What’s
more, both graphs put summer and winter Olympics in one graph. People could not analyze too much
conclusion from the original graphs. Because summer and winter were mixed in one graph. These
two graphs had five different color circles. One color presented one continent. There were four
continents that held Olympics. However, these two graphs also put the five continents countries
together that did not analyze every continent information.

II. The preparation of Bar graph

From the two old graphs to know the cost to host an Olympic Game and the percentage of every
country’s Olympic Game’s cost overturn. It can be calculated every country’s budget about holding
an Olympic Games, though the original Excel form. The following form is added the all countries
budgets.

Costs of Olympic Games (1968-2016)

Cost Cost Overturns Budget
Year Summer/Winter Country
（$ Billion） (%) ($ Billion)
 1968 Winter France(Grenoble) 0.9 181 0.41
1976 Summer Canada(Montreal) 6.1 720 0.74
1980 Winter U.S. (Lake Placid) 0.4 324 0.09
1988 Winter Canada(Calgary) 1.1 65 0.67
1992 Summer France(Albertville) 2 137 0.84
1992 Winter Spain(Barcelona) 9.7 266 2.65
1994 Winter Norway(Lillehammer) 2.2 277 0.58
1996 Summer U.S.(Atlanta) 4.1 151 1.63
1998 Winter Japan(Nagano) 2.2 56 1.41
2000 Summer Australis(Sydney) 5 90 2.63
2002 Winter U.S. (Salt Lake City) 2.5 24 2.01
2004 Summer Greece(Athens) 2.9 49 1.94
2006 Winter Italy(Torino) 4.4 80 2.44
2008 Summer China(Beijing) 6.8 2 6.67
2010 Winter Canada(Vancouver) 2.5 13 2.21
2012 Summer U.K.(London) 15 76 8.52
2014 Winter Russia(Sochi) 21.9 289 5.62
2016 Summer Brazil(Rio) 4.6 51 3.05
(Source: https://howmuch.net/articles/olympic-costs)
III. Plotting
1. Winter & Summer

A-France(Grenoble) C-Canada(Calgary) E-Norway(Lillehammer) G-U.S. (Salt Lake City) I-Canada(Vancouver)

B-U.S. (Lake Placid) D-Spain(Barcelona) F-Japan(Nagano) H-Italy(Torino) J-Russia(Sochi)

Figure 3
(The source of data: https://howmuch.net/articles/olympic-
costs)
Figure 3 only focus on the countries hosted Winter Olympics, which gets the cost and the budget
data together to compare each other. It can be obviously found Canada and Russia have the big gap
between the budget and the cost. Russia was the highest cost and budget country, among all Winter
Olympic host countries. Canada was the second. The reason lead to the Russia had a 289% cost
overturn maybe build a new construction site, improve old public facilities, or build some new roads.
Though looking for some material to prove, a Chinese journalist named Weishan Chen (2015)
reported Russia costed the most money to be used for security, almost 1.92billion dollars (Chen,
2015). Russia also spent 10 billion dollars to build a new road to help people to come to Sochi easier
(Chen, 2015). At the end of Chen’s (2015) report, he found the number of the visitors were raised
40%. Thus, the Figure 3 can easy find the information from the Winter Olympics held countries.

A-Canada(Montreal) C-U.S.(Atlanta) E-Greece(Anthems) G-U.K.(London)

B-France(Albertville) D-Australis(Sydney) F-China(Beijing) H-Brazil(Rio)

Figure 4
(The source of data: https://howmuch.net/articles/olympic-costs)
Figure 4 Shows the Summer Olympics’ budgets and costs from 1968 to 2016. It does not be
associated with positive and negative correlation. The expense is not related with the year. From the
Figure 4, there is not a huge change between budget and cost, when China hosted the Summer
Olympics. However, the U.K. not only had the biggest cost and budget, but also its had a huge
change between the cost and budget. Comparing with the Figure1 and 2, the problems about hard
to collect information and analyzed every country’s expense data was solved by the Figure 3 and
Figure 4. The Figure 3 and 4 also show countries that held Summer Olympics the budgets and the
costs spent more money than countries that held Winter Olympics.
2. Continents
 A- France(Grenoble) D- Norway(Lillehammer) G- U.K. (London)
B- France(Albertville) E- Greece(Athens)
C- Spain(Barcelona) F- Italy(Torino)
Figure 5
(The source of data: https://howmuch.net/articles/olympic-costs)
According to the Figure 1 and 2, there are five different colors: blue, black, red, and yellow, green.
These are the Olympic Rings color, and are also the symbol of the five continents: Austrasia, Africa,
Americas, and Europe. The Figure 1 and 2 show the Europe had the most countries that had held the
Olympic Games, but they cannot analyze other information. Therefore, the Figure 5 can help to show
U.K. still was the largest cost and budget country. Spain was the secondary largest cost and budget
country. What’s more, the Figure 5 is in chronological order, and the budget and cost are the rising
trends.

IV. Conclusion
About the original graphs, they looked colorful and knew every country’s money that spend when
held an Olympics. However, except that information, it was hard to analyze anther information.
Figure 6 is the whole bar plot, comparing the budget and the cost. It is unreasonable to contrast each
other, because the season to hold the games is not the same.

A- France(Grenoble) G- K-U.S. (Salt Lake Canada(Vancouver)

B-Canada(Montreal) Norway(Lillehamme City) P-U.K.(London)
C-U.S. (Lake Placid) r) L-Greece(Athens) Q-Russia(Sochi)
D-Canada(Calgary) H-U.S.(Atlanta) M-Italy(Torino) R-Brazil(Rio)
E-France(Albertville) I-Japan(Nagano) N-China(Beijing)
F-Spain(Barcelona) J-Australis(Sydney) O-

Figure 6
(The source of data: https://howmuch.net/articles/olympic-costs)
The advantage of the bar plot is mainly finding the relationship between discontinuous
independent variables and continuous dependent variables. For the original graphs, one country had
only one data. It was called discontinuous independent variables. In the ggplot2 package, the bar plot
is the best way to redesign original graphs. Figure 3, 4, 5 are all bar plots, there are used two kinds
styles to present the data. These are very clearly to understand and analyze data.
References
Chen, W. (2015, August 11). Chinanews. Retrieved from
http://www.chinanews.com/ty/2015/08-11/7459001.shtml

Raul. (2016, August 31). The Olympic Games Always Go Over Budget, in One Chart (1968-
2016). Retrieved from Howmuch: https://howmuch.net/articles/olympic-costs
 Appendix
 Figure3, 4, 6 code
library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)
library(splines)
winter <- test2 %>% gather("item",value,-1:-2) %>%
#df1 <- df %>% gather("item",value,-1:-2) %>%
bind_cols(data.frame(item_id=rep(1:2,each=10)))
print(winter)
ggplot(winter,aes(var,value))+
geom_bar(aes(fill=item),stat = "identity",position="dodge",width=0.8)+
labs(title="Costs of the Olympic Games(Winter)")+
labs(x="Country",y="Expense")

 Figure 5 code
library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)
library(splines)
winter <- test2 %>% gather("item",value,-1:-2) %>%
#df1 <- df %>% gather("item",value,-1:-2) %>%
bind_cols(data.frame(item_id=rep(1:2,each=7)))
print(winter)
ggplot(winter,aes(var,value))+
geom_bar(aes(fill=item),stat = "identity",width=0.8)+
facet_grid(item~.)+
labs(x="Country",y="Expense",title="Costs of Olympic Games(Europe)")