>>If you take, say, a decathlon, then the winner is the guy who did consistently well, maybe only coming 3rd in every event, and not necessarily being best in any. Now, if we say a gold medal is worth 3 points, a silver 2, and a bronze 1, then say one nation at the end had earned just 2 gold medals, and another 7 bronzes, which nation has a better sports record, ie which would come higher in the tables?
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>>I've often thought this when viewing the medal tables. I think the golds trump any no. of silvers then bronzes, but it doesn't seem right to me.
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>Depends upon how you define "Better" and that's really a personal preference
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>IMO.........2 Silvers is better than 1 Gold, but 2 Gold is better than 3 Silver.
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>How to factor in the Bronze?????
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>Don't know. 2 Silvers is better than 1 Gold, but 2 Bronze is not better than 1 Silver.
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>Seems as if the trick is to come with a weighting (5 3 1???? 5 4 1???? etc) to represent the relative values better

Aye, i just gave the 1-2-3 points as an example - it depends how you weight each. But the team with the most gold is always on top, even if the next has many silvers to its few golds, at least in the early stages. Of course, at the end, China's million. USA's hundreds, etc is irrefutable.