MEDAL COUNT DORKERY: Using the probably too-obvious system of "three points for a gold, two points for a silver, one point for a bronze" I get the following ranking of the medal winning nations (total points on the right):

1 USA 70
2 GERMANY 63
3 CANADA 61
4 NORWAY 49
5 KOREA 32
6 AUSTRIA 30
7 RUSSIA 26
8 SWEDEN 23
9 CHINA 23
10 SUISSE 21
11 FRANCE 18
12 DUTCH 17
13 POLAND 11
14 CZECH 10
15 ITALY 8
16 JAPAN 8
17 AUSSIE 8
18 FINLAND 6
19 SLOVAK 6
20 BELARUS 6
21 SLOVENE 5
22 CROAT 5
23 LATVIA 4
24 GBR 3
25 KAZAKH 2
26 ESTONIA 2

Well hey--it looks mostly just like the actual medal table! U-S-A! I was a little worried before I excelified this stuff, I thought maybe Canada could jump ahead of us due to their five gold medal edge. But no.

So obviously this is a ridiculously simple system, I've seen others, like--say--number of medals relative to population, or to GDP. But first, second and third place are the positions the IOC has chosen to glorify in their stodgy wisdom, you know? You can argue that the nation with the most gold medals wins the Olympics too, but the IOC cares about more than one winner. It cares about the vice winner, and the vice vice winner! Plus the gold medal argument forces you to make ridiculous statements like: Great Britain with one gold had a better Olympics than Japan with five medals. (Another terrible Olympics for Japan by the way. You would think getting humiliated by the Koreans every two years would motivate them more.) I say--no the overvaluing of gold medals! The IOC wants us to care about more than that, and I respect their wishes. America won Vancouver and I have mathematical proof. (Of course the IOC also doesn't want us to declare a "winner" of the games as well but we'll look the other way for the purpose of this post.)