But it goes according to points accumulated. Higher points are awarded for higher level moves. True, one skater might skate a perfectly clean program, but only have moves of a maxium value of, say, 2 pts. a piece. Using this example, a clean program of 7 2pt elements would only garner a score of 14. A program consisting of higher ranking elements could easily rate higher marks, even with falls. Continuing with the same example, a program consisting 7 4pt elements with 2 flawed jumps (let's say, a 2pt deduction on each) and a 2 falls (1pt deduction for each fall) would equal 22, meaning that the second skater would rank higher than the first skater even with flaws and falls. Granted, the actual scoring system is more complicated than this (from what I can gather from what I've read), it's a lot more fair and less biased than the old system (you start with a perfect 6 and then receive deductions for errors) that was done away with after the scandal in pairs skating in Salt Lake City. Am I making any sense?

You make sense Matt, but it still doesn't make sense that you fall on your ass not once, but twice, and you still walk away with a medal. Otherwise, I would have won about 30 golds.

Well, she fell on her ass once and touched down on the ice with her hands once (never going all the way splat). That's counted more as a fumble instead of an out and out fall. She definitely wasn't scored as high on the fumble as she would've been without mistakes, but she didn't receive the mandatory deduction she did on the fall. She was able to pull it out because of her artistic work and her recovery. If you'd only seen the later part of her program without the fall and fumble, you'd never have known anything had happened because she recovered well unlike other skaters who simply can never put their minds back in the game after fall and the remainder of their programs are just a mess.

If you check out the Olympics Homepage, you can actually see how it all played out. You actually see the base value, and how the judges grade the execution of a particular move. That's how Evan Lysacek went from 10th to 4th and Johnny Weir from 2nd to 6th.