Results are skewed towards individual disciplines (where you can compete for more than one medal) and penalize team disciplines, where you can compete for just one medal. I think Australia comes out high because of a few champ athletes engaged in many swimming distances/styles.

Yep, in Athens and Sydney the Bahamas led in medals per capita and/or per million. Go Bahamas.

The 300,000+ population of The Bahamas know the anthem, and great one it is too! Lift up your heads Bahamaland. You will be hearing it soon in China.

These 'modified' tables were mainly pushed by Australians keen to show how well they do! There are many confounding factors in medals tables, that probably gall the decathletes as much as anyone. Swimming has already been mentioned - a sport that always weights the medal tables in the favour of the Aussies and Americans. Michael Phelps wins 8 golds for variations on one sport. Decathletes win one gold for 10 disciplines. Another problem is that most of the Olympic sports are expensive to be good in, or need a national support infrastructure that is present in developed or totalitarian eastern bloc nations, but are non existent in large developing nations, no matter what their population is. Brazil is a good example - it doesn't cost much to run with a football at your feet. It might be a good idea to try and publish weighted medals tables related to the percentage of GDP allocated to investment in that sport. Australia may do very well in swimming, but there are more 50 metre pools in Brisbane alone than the whole UK, not to mention the sun!

The Bahamas finished first in the medals per capita, based on two medals, both in sprints. While that is surely a source of pride for Bahamians, it surely strains credulity to claim that one gold and one bronze medal an olympic power makes. The Bahamas has 400,000 people, making it a virtual lock to be one of the world's top Olympic nations as long as it wins even a single medal. You have to take into account that while the US and China have more people, they still are limited to the same number of entrants per competition as any other nation. What if the USA could enter a proportionate number of athletes based on our population? Bahamas has one million times fewer people as USA, so what if the USA could just slightly even out Bahamas advantage in this rankings system by simply sending ten times as many sprinters as the Bahamas? After all, track athletes peak at different times, go through injuries, etc, so the more athletes we send, the better our chances of getting more medals. There were several track athletes who were expected to qualify for Beijing at the US track and field olympic trials, but were upset by lesser-known athletes who set personal bests that day but were not experienced in international competition. Also, What if the USA could enter 3 teams in men's and women's basketball? If they spread around the talent, the USA might sweep all medals in that sport. If we are going to be penalized in medals standings because of the mere existence of the millions of American people who don't even compete or even watch the Olympics on TV, then why not let usa counterbalance that penalty? Yes, a raw count of medals is not fair to smaller countries, this alternative method seems equally flawed.

Even if China won every medal, they still wouldn't get 1 medal per million population, there just aren't enough to go around.

Wow, just wanna say so many good comments here.. all very valid. i agree this system is not very good, i think by gold is the most logical way.

By the way, why do you want to evaluate which nation is best?