The World Cup is here. For a large swath of the planet, we do not have a team in the tournament, which raises a question: Who do you root for game by game?
I’m teaching a sports data visualization and analysis course this fall, so I started thinking if there was an assignment in here somewhere. Could students develop some kind of algorithm? And the more I thought about it, the more I realized: Nope.
Here’s why, in pseudocode, that an algorithmic approach to choosing a side in each match is not something you can do in code:
for each of two teams in a match: if you’ve been to that country: take that team else if you’ve been to both: take the one where you have better friends else if you have good friends or no friends in both: take the one where you had a better meal else if the food is pretty good in both: take the one with the less horrible national drink else if you’ve been to neither: take the one that didn’t bribe their way into the tournament else if both arrived seemingly fairly/both bribed everyone to get there: take the one who used to be a beloved ally until recently else if both were beloved allies until recently: take the one who you haven’t fought a war against at some point in history else if you’ve never fought a war against either: take the one that has a player you’ve heard of before else if neither has a player you know: take the one with the cooler nickname (example: the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon, sadly not in the tournament) else if neither country are all that friendly: take the one not run by a murderous dictator else if both are run by a murderous dictator: take the one with a better uniform else if both murderous dictatorships have decent kits: take the one that has nuclear weapons and if all else fails: root for Iceland. Their whole country has a population equal to Honolulu, Hawaii.