Which Country Will Win the Paris Olympics? Don’t Just Count Medals.

Credit...Illustration by The New York Times; Images by Peter6666, and Pure Imagination, via Getty ImagesNo nation officially wins the Olympics, but that doesn’t stop journalists and others from trying to keep score by counting gold, silver and bronze medals. Unfortunately, the two main approaches are equally flawed. The raw medal count overly favors populous nations, while ranking nations by medals per capita overly favors small nations that win one, two or a few medals, possibly by fluke.

There is a better way to rank nations by their Olympic prowess. I was put in touch with the researchers who developed the concept by Pete Pfitzinger, a college classmate of mine who was the top American…