[bonobo]

Or you could just count the number of times their names are mentioned... Except neither approach really represents character importance accurately. Why just go the naive route when you can extract more information from your data by using a more complex approach?

The article actually counters your point exactly:

"For example, Arya Stark, Sansa’s younger sister, has the third most chapters with 34, but ranks behind Sansa in terms of network importance."

[peeters]

> Or you could just count the number of times their names are mentioned

"Hodor"

[chongli]

I don't think the naive approach is too far off in this case. Arya's importance is reflected in the sheer amount of exposition devoted to her. She's pretty clearly being set up to make a major return at some point, just as it is with Daenerys. The characters with a lot of network connections, on the other hand, are easy to kill off because they're ultimately redundant.