For me, the need to develop a new index for football league competitiveness was twofold. Firstly, I was sick of hearing people talking about which leagues were or weren’t “competitive” without any substantive evidence to support those gut feelings. And secondly, I just wasn’t happy with the way that I’d seen it calculated elsewhere.
Europeans love football. Even a tiny microstate like San Marino can cobble together a league system with 15 teams from its 35,000 or so inhabitants. We already have European-wide competitions where each country’s top teams can face off, and each country is already ranked to show where the best teams come from, but fans will often refer to a less distinct measure of a league’s merits: competitiveness. It’s an indicator of relative excitement of a league season, while saying zero about the quality, and is typically “felt” more than “measured”. I prefer to measure things though (stop giggling, you), so let’s formulate a way to let the numbers decide whose football we should be watching.
According to Twitter I have 160 followers, and they are the most important people there. They’re the only ones listening. But who is the most important, and how can I exploit them for a Twitter high score?