Dividing Seats

Rounding, and its paradoxes

An interactive lesson with 6 steps, about 5 minutes: you predict, drag and solve, with instant feedback on every answer. It runs in your browser and needs JavaScript.

What you’ll learn

• Hamilton’s method: give whole quotas, then leftovers to the largest remainders.
• The Alabama paradox: more total seats can mean fewer for one state.
• Like voting, apportionment can’t satisfy every fairness property at once.

Steps

1. Whole seats only
2. Try it
3. A divisor method
4. Largest remainders
5. No perfect method
6. The Alabama paradox