Who won all the medals? (2)



The BBC reported today that Britain is third in the medals table at Beijing, while the New York Times ranks Britain sixth.

As you can see, the BBC ranks by gold medals, the NYT by total number of medals. Both rankings seem less than fair: one rates only excellence, not a spread of results, the other denies that golds are, in everyone’s eyes, worth more than silver or bronze. So I recalculated the results using a University-entrance system of 3 points for gold, 2 for silver, 1 for bronze. Here is what emerges:

gold  silver  bronze  total  points 
 1 China 39 14 14 67 159
 2 USA 22 24 26 72 140
 3 Australia 11 10 12 33  65
 4 Russia  8 13 15 36  65
 5 Great Britain  12  7  8 27  58
 6 Germany  9  7  7 23  48
 7 South Korea  8  9  6 23  48
 8 France  4 11 13 28  47
 9 Japan  8  5  7 20  41
10 Italy  6  6  6 18  36


Edit
I don't think this post on the BBC website was inspired by this blog, but it picks up the same theme.