The real medal counts

As I’ve written before, the way that the media counts medals is ridiculous. Gold>silver>bronze, but you’d never know that since they just add up the total number of medals and declare a winner from that count. The overall count needs to reflect that not all medals are created equal and a simple sum is a silly way to designate a champion country. I have suggested a weighted system: 3 points for gold, 2 points for silver, 1 point for bronze. You’ll notice that America has won the “official” medal count, which ended as such:

United States: 9 Gold / 15 Silver / 13 Bronze : 37 total medals
Germany: 10 Gold / 13 Silver / 7 Bronze: 30 total medals
Canada: 14 Gold / 7 Silver / 5 Bronze: 26 total medals

Under my weighted system, the score would be as follows:

United States: 70 points
Germany: 63 points
Canada: 61 points

Now, I also suggested weighting the gold even more heavily, in a 4/2/1 or 5/3/1 method. Let’s see what the scores would have been then:

In the 4/2/1 system:

United States: 79 points
Canada: 75 points
Germany: 73 points

In the 5/3/1 system:

United States: 103 points
Canada: 96 points
Germany: 96 points

No matter how you slice it, America was top dog this year. But the weighted system is clearly a superior metric to the standard medal count procedure. This really shouldn’t even be a question, should it?

(I did all this math on the top of my head in about two minutes, so if there’s a mistake or two feel free to point it out in the comments.)