How do the points work in diving?

Question

i've been watching the olympics alot recently especially the diving (mainly because of the gorgeous tom daley) but i realised i have no idea how the scoring worked... i understand you have to enter vertically and create no splash... but whats the deal with the white numbers and blue numbers.... answers greatfully received xx

Answer 1

Each dive has a degree of difficulty (shown as d.d.).  The difficulty is predetermined based on how many flips, twists are done. You can see how it is actually determined on http://www.usadiving.org  

There are 7 judges that score the dive from 0 (being the worse) to 10 (being the best)  The highest and lowest two scores are dropped leaving 3 scores.  Those three scores are added together and multiplied by the degree of difficulty to come up with a total.

So say for example a dive with a d.d. of 3.0 is done.  THe scores are 9   9   8.5   8.5   9   8  and  8.5    The two highest are 9 and 9, and the two lowest are 8 and 8.5 leaving an 8.5/8.5/9 left.   Added together they equal 26.   26 multiplied by 3.0 = 78

Answer 2

I believe the two highest and the two lowest scores are dropped, then the remaining scores are multiplied by the degree of difficulty.