District/School Administration PK-16 Program Support Educational Technology
Technology Toolkit

Apportionment Methods
North Shore Regional Vocational School District

Description of Activities

The textbook provides exercises in the use of the various apportionment schemes by application to small, fictitious countries. The point is to demonstrate that changes in the methodology of the mathematics by which seats in the legislative bodies are allocated actually produces different results. Because of the volume of calculations involved, the problems in the text are necessarily limited in scope. This also restricts their relevance.

The use of the spreadsheet in this unit allows students to do more realistic problems using larger data sets. The opportunity exists, as well, for students to research the data sets themselves on the Internet. The attached samples of assignments [PDF] include the application of Webster's Method to a fictional country, and the 1791 U.S. apportionment by Hamilton's Method and by the Huntington-Hill Method.

The students used wireless laptop computers as a regular part of the curriculum. The computers were used approximately one day per week in the classroom. Students had access to the Internet, and each student had his or her own computer. Students used the same computers each time, and each student's files were stored in a folder on the hard drive. Large data files were made available in a folder held on the school's file server.

The final assignment was to recreate the 2001 U.S. Congressional apportionment using the Huntington-Hill Method. Students had to research the 2000 Census by state, as well as the correct current representation of each state in Congress, create a spreadsheet determining the representation of each state, and then compare their results with the actual representation.

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