A graph of the logarithm of both the number of people and the number of medals yields a relatively straight line — except for the 23 held by Phelps. That number is far to the right of the line, meaning that the number of medals is much greater than expected. In fact, the line crosses the "one individual" level at about 14, which would be about what we might expect based only on the medal counts of all other individuals.
Exactly how special is Phelps' achievement? The graph suggests we'd need to wait until almost five times as many medals have been awarded before we would reasonably expect someone to reach a total of 23. At the present rate of about 100 gold medals per year (average of Summer Games and Winter Games), we would need to wait about another 250 years to reach this mark — beyond 2260!